Environment

Karma Automotive has raised a $100 million lifeline from outside investors, as reported by Bloomberg, with the struggling electric vehicle maker’s fortunes likely buoyed by the current market optimism on other EV companies including Tesla. Karma is the reincarnated version of Fisker Automotive, which previously faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Wanxiang Group in 2014.

Tesla’s 2014 acquisition of SolarCity turned the electric vehicle manufacturer into the undisputed largest player in residential solar, but that lead has steadily eroded as its major competitor, Sunrun, surged ahead with more aggressive plans. Now with the $3.2 billion dollar acquisition of the residential solar installation company, Vivint Solar, Sunrun looks to solidify its

Replenysh has been kicking since 2016, but up til now, the Orange County, California startup hasn’t done much press. That changes today, as the company announces that it has raised a $2 million seed round with the fairly lofty goal of transforming recycling in the U.S. A press release outlining Replenysh’s plans offers up plenty

As perennial front runner for the title of probably-the-most-evil tech company, Amazon has a long way to go to rehabilitate its image as a take-no-prisoners, industry-consolidating wealth machine. In a bold effort to do so, the company announced today that it would buy the rights to Seattle’s KeyArena, an aging stadium currently under redevelopment in

DroneBase, a Los Angeles-based provider of drone pilots for industrial services companies, has raised $7.5 million during the pandemic to double down on its work with renewable energy companies. While chief executive Dan Burton acknowledged that the company was fundraising prior to the pandemic, the industrial lockdown actually accelerated demand for the company’s services. Even

Roger Duncan Contributor Roger Duncan is a former Research Fellow at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and the former General Manager of Austin Energy. He is the co-author of the upcoming book, “The Future of Buildings, Transportation and Power.” The economic lockdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic has had an

(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed a major conservation bill that would permanently direct $900 million a year to a long-standing federal program aimed at acquiring and protecting public lands. The 73-25 vote in the Republican-led chamber was a rare bipartisan effort led by Republican Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines

FILE PHOTO: The European Central Bank (ECB) logo is pictured before a news conference on the outcome of the meeting of the Governing Council in Frankfurt, Germany, January 23, 2020. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Euro zone banks are heavily exposed to carbon-intensive industries and face significant climate-change related risks so they must start to

A diver tries to cut a rope from the tail of a whale shark near Koh Tao Island, Thailand June 13, 2020, in this still image obtained from a social media video. Sarakorn Pokaprakarn/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. BANGKOK (Reuters) – Divers in Thailand have captured dramatic

Finland-based Swappie has closed a €35.8 million ($40.6M) Series B to expand into new markets in Europe. The ecommerce business refurbishes and resells used iPhones, taking care of the entire process from testing and repairing used handsets, to selling the refurbished devices via its own marketplace, with a 12-month warranty. Local VC and private equity

(Reuters) – Six European Union countries, including Germany, France and the Netherlands, have called for EU legislation and increased funding to support hydrogen, a low-carbon technology in line for cash from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund. FILE PHOTO: European Union flags fly outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 19, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File

(Reuters) – Unilever Plc (ULVR.L) said on Monday it will invest 1 billion euros in a fund to invest in climate change projects and reduce to net zero greenhouse gas emissions from all its products by 2039, 11 years ahead of the Paris Agreement deadline. FILE PHOTO: Unilever headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands August 21, 2018.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An earthquake with a 5.7 magnitude shook Bingol province in eastern Turkey on Sunday, causing the collapse of a military observation tower which injured three people, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said. Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) said the epicentre of the quake was in the Karliova district of Bingol. Soylu

(Reuters) – An earthquake of magnitude 5.6 has struck the Taiwan region early on Sunday, the European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said. The quake was at a depth of 20 km (12.43 miles), EMSC said. It was revised from its initial measurement of magnitude 6 and depth of 55 km. Taiwan, a self-ruled island that

(Reuters) – Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Friday unveiled what he called a “blueprint” for enabling energy extraction, mining, grazing and logging in federal forests by speeding up environmental reviews and permitting. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue holds a U.S. flag-themed face mask while speaking about the nation?s food supply chain during

Volkswagen has started to sell a home-charging device as the automaker prepares to bring its new ID family of electric vehicles to market. The ID.3 is the first electric vehicle under the ID label and will only be sold in Europe. Customers who made reservations for the launch edition, known as ID.3 1st, will be

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose for a 13th consecutive month in May, government data showed on Friday, despite President Jair Bolsonaro’s deployment of the military to fight soaring environmental destruction in the region FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: An aerial view shows a deforested plot of the Amazon near Porto Velho, Rondonia

LONDON (Reuters) – The Scottish government said on Friday it has set up a 62 million pound ($78 million) fund to help the energy industry recover from the impacts of the coronavirus crisis and the collapse in oil and gas prices. The energy transition fund will support businesses in the sector over the next five

FILE PHOTO: An inmate hand crew, wearing orange, uses chain saws and hand tools to cut a line through vegetation that is reddened by fire retardant on one side and charred by fire on the other at a wildfire dubbed the Cave Fire, burning in the hills of Santa Barbara, California, U.S., November 26, 2019.

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Amazon is seen in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, April 22, 2020. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol (Reuters) – E-commerce companies Amazon Inc and eBay Inc have been instructed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop selling unproven or unsafe disinfectants, including products falsely marketed as killing COVID-19, on their platforms, Bloomberg reported

HAVANA (Reuters) – Luminous yellow and blue fish dart through the fragments of coral hanging from rows of pipes anchored to the seabed in Guanahacabibes, in western Cuba, while scientists in diving gear annotate their observations on waterproof clipboards. Divers check a coral reef being raised for research by the National Aquarium of Cuba in

South Africa-based renewable energy startup Sun Exchange has raised $3 million to close its Series A funding round totaling $4 million. The company operates a peer-to-peer, crypto-enabled business that allows individuals anywhere in the world to invest in solar infrastructure in Africa. How’s that all work? “You as an individual are selling electricity to a

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion with law enforcement in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2020. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Tuesday overturned an Obama-era rule that barred hunters in Alaska national preserves from baiting bear

JAKARTA (Reuters) – An earthquake with a 6.0 magnitude struck south of Buru Island in the Moluccas Islands province in eastern Indonesia, the country’s meteorology, climatology and geophysical agency (BMKG) said on Tuesday. The quake, which had a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), was not expected to trigger a tsunami, the agency added in

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Below average rainfall in most of Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing regions last week meant more downpours were needed to strengthen the crop, farmers said on Monday. FILE PHOTO: A farmer works on a cocoa farm in Bobia, Gagnoa, Ivory Coast, December 6, 2019. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon/File Photo Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer,

Tropical Storm Cristobal is seen on a northern track over the Gulf of Mexico in a satellite image taken June 7, 2020. NOAA/Handout via REUTERS HOUSTON (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Cristobal on Sunday slowed its advance through the Gulf of Mexico, bringing a coastal storm surge, high winds and rain to southeast Louisiana, where it

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Cristobal on Saturday dumped rain from Louisiana to the Florida peninsula as it moved through the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, prompting evacuations of several southeast Louisiana towns and dozens of offshore oil platforms. Workers disembark from a helicopter after being evacuated from oil production platforms ahead of Tropical Storm Cristobal,

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia has captured 50 people and charged them with illegally trafficking plants and animals as part of efforts by authorities to protect the environment, the government said in a statement on Friday. The Andean country is the world’s second most biodiverse country after neighboring Brazil and is home to over 50,000 recorded

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump announced on Friday he will open up a 5,000 square mile conservation area in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England to commercial fishing. U.S. President Donald Trump talks about a U.S. jobs report amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic as he addresses a news conference as

FILE PHOTO: The Environmental Protection Agency headquarters is seen in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 19, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released on Thursday a proposed overhaul of how major clean air rules are written by changing the cost-benefit analysis process, a move that would affect the stringency of future

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. senators on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill that would direct the Agriculture Department to help farmers, ranchers and landowners use carbon dioxide-absorbing practices to generate carbon credits, a rare collaboration on climate change. FILE PHOTO: Republican Senator Mike Braun speaks during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, on Capitol

People pull the body of a dead pregnant elephant out of the water, after the animal was allegedly fed with firecracker-stuffed pineapple and died, in Malappuram, India, May 27, 2020 in this still image taken from a video. ANI/Reuters TV via REUTERS KOCHI, India (Reuters) – A pregnant elephant died in India apparently after eating

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Ever wonder what happens to the half-used bars of individually wrapped soap when you leave your hotel to head home after a holiday or business trip? A staff member of Soap Cycling, a Hong Kong-based non-governmental organisation, shows used soap (R) collected from hotels for recycling, and reprocessed soap (L), at

FILE PHOTO: A facility for capturing CO2 from air of Swiss Climeworks AG is placed on the roof of a waste incinerating plant in Hinwil, Switzerland July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann LONDON (Reuters) – Swiss start-up Climeworks said on Tuesday it had raised a further $75 million from private investors to help fund technology which

FILE PHOTO: Cars damaged by floods caused by Tropical Storm Amanda are seen in San Salvador, El Salvador May 31, 2020. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Torrential rains at the weekend caused by Tropical Storm Amanda have killed at least 20 people in Central America, authorities said on Monday, as remnants of the weather

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Amanda has killed at least seven people in El Salvador as heavy rains made rivers overflow, flooded city streets and produced landslides, Interior Minister Mario Duran said on Sunday. “We’ve seen people asking for help, asking for the government. We haven’t deployed everywhere, the situation is overwhelming,” said Duran.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian authorities are considering two companies’ requests to dispose mining waste into the ocean, a senior government official said on Sunday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about the environmental impact of mining. The requests come as mining waste management is increasingly scrutinized after a nickel plant in neighboring Papua New Guinea

HAVANA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ken Hutton is worried Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas where he lives is far from rebuilt after being devastated by Hurricane Dorian last year yet he is bracing for another hurricane season in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. FILE PHOTO: A man walks among the debris of his house

The U.S. has suffered from devastating wildfires over the last few years as global temperatures rise and weather patterns change, making the otherwise natural phenomenon especially unpredictable and severe. To help out, Stanford researchers have found a way to track and predict dry, at-risk areas using machine learning and satellite imagery. Currently the way forests

(Reuters) – Washington state has confirmed its third sighting of an Asian giant hornet, dubbed the “murder hornet,” indicating the invasive, predatory insect has survived the winter in the U.S. Northwest, state agriculture officials said on Friday. The stinging hornet, which can grow as large as 2-1/2 inches (6.4 cm) in length, could potentially pose

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China has excluded “clean coal” from a list of projects eligible for green bonds, according to long-awaited new draft guidelines published by the central bank on Friday. The new catalogue of eligible projects replaces the previous one published in 2015, and will be open to public consultation until June 12, the People’s

Vast monoculture farms outstripped the ability of bee populations to pollinate them naturally long ago, but the techniques that have arisen to fill that gap are neither precise nor modern. Israeli startup BeeHero aims to change that by treating hives both as living things and IoT devices, tracking health and pollination progress practically in real

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Sea turtles have been spotted swimming amid garbage next to an airport in Brazil’s tourist hotspot of Rio de Janeiro, as the scream of jet engines that would normally keep them away has been largely silenced due to the coronavirus pandemic. Animals are increasingly entering areas normally populated by humans,

London-based Greyparrot, which uses computer vision AI to scale efficient processing of recycling, has bagged £1.825 million (~$2.2M) in seed funding, topping up the $1.2M in pre-seed funding it had raised previously. The latest round is led by early stage European industrial tech investor Speedinvest, with participation from UK-based early stage b2b investor, Force Over

FILE PHOTO: Cars fill the roads as people travel before the Thanksgiving Day holiday in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. November 20, 2018. REUTERS/Kamil Krzaczynski WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of 23 U.S. states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Wednesday challenging a Trump administration decision to weaken Obama-era fuel efficiency standards. In March,

The European Commission is proposing to direct billions of euros of financial relief into high tech and green investments to help the bloc recover from the coronavirus crisis. Technologies such as 5G, AI, cloud, cybersecurity, supercomputing and renewable energy look set to benefit from a €750BN pan-EU support package set out today — aligning with

(Reuters) – Britain has proposed hosting in November 2021 a United Nations’ climate summit that was postponed from this November due to the coronavirus pandemic, a letter from the Cabinet Office seen by Reuters shows. The two-week summit – expected to be the biggest ever held in Britain – had been expected to trigger fresh

FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron takes part in a videoconference with region prefects at the crisis center of the Interior Ministry, as the lockdown introduced two months ago to fight the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) starts to ease, in Paris, France, May 13, 2020. Ludovic Marin/Pool via REUTERS PARIS (Reuters) – France