Solar Surges Around the World

- Adam Clare

Solar panels are wonderful: you install them and then you get free energy from the sun. The expensive part of solar panels is buying and installing the panels; after that the costs of operation are basically zero. This is the opposite of fossil fuels since with fossil fuels you buy a cheap fuel tank and pay forever for the fuel. The global economy has finally caught on to the genius of solar energy and are increasing panels at a fantastic pace. Countries that don’t embrace free renewable power will find themselves left behind.

Outside China, all other countries together installed an estimated 124 GW in the first half of 2025 — 15% higher than the first half of 2024. India recorded the second highest installations with 24 GW, a 49% increase over the already strong 16 GW added in deployment in H1-2024. The United States ranked third with 21 GW, up 4% year-on-year, despite recent moves by the US government to restrict clean power deployment. Deployment dipped slightly in Germany and Brazil. The remaining countries added 65 GW in H1-2025, 22% more than in H1-2024.

Growth in Africa is also beginning to take-off, as the amount of solar panels it imported from China rose 60% in the last 12 months, as Ember reported. However, lack of access to official installation data still obscures the actual pace of solar deployment on the continent.

With deployment surging across key markets and China’s rapid scale-up pushing global installations to new highs, 2025 is on track to become another historic year for solar power. The numbers highlight not only solar’s momentum, but also its pivotal role in reshaping the global energy system.

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The Simplest Way to Improve Cities: Remove Cars

- Adam Clare

For the last 100 years streets have been destroyed by the automobile and corporations that profit from excessive use of cars. This has caused harm to the wellbeing of people both in and outside the cars as well as countless environmental issues. It does not have to be this way, and cities from Paris to Seoul have shown us that we can modify our cities to reclaim them from the scourge of the automobile industry. Over at Fast Company they have a nice list of five things cities can do to improve life for everyone in the.

Reversing car-centric design is not a utopian dream. Cities around the world are already doing it. Paris is removing 70,000 parking spaces to make room for bikes and trees. Barcelona is expanding its network of “superblocks” that prioritize pedestrians and eliminate through-traffic. Oslo removed cars entirely from its city center and saw foot traffic, and local business, surge. Cities in the Global South are pioneering new forms of green micormobility, such as Jakarta where the government has set a target of electrifying 2.1 million motor cyles by the end of 2025

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Canada Does Something About The Housing Crisis

- Adam Clare

construction

The housing supply in Canada, like many other places, has been negatively impacted by the financialisation of housing. Companies like AirBnB and private equity have removed housing from the market which have increased the price of shelter for everyone, but benefiting only a few. This has led to a crisis of affordable housing for individuals and families alike. Thankfully the federal government of Canada has launched the Build Canada Homes initiative to increase housing supply while not giving into fickle market trends. The new housing will be built with an environmental lens and make use of local resources as best as possible. Let’s get building.

A central feature of Build Canada Homes is its focus on affordable and social housing rather than relying solely on market supply. The agency is mandated to build and preserve units that remain permanently affordable, including supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness, rentals for low and moderate income households, and mixed income communities that reduce stigma by serving a broad spectrum of Canadians. This emphasis has important implications. By expanding the non-market stock, the program builds a foundation of housing insulated from speculative pressures, stabilizing communities over the long term. Inclusion of mixed income developments, as seen in successful models in Vienna, ensures political support and better integration into cities. It also shifts the federal role from merely enabling private developers to directly shaping housing outcomes, embedding affordability as a permanent feature of the housing landscape.

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We Can Use Container Ships to Sequester CO2

- Adam Clare

wind enhanced ship

Years of researchers looking into carbon sequestration have concluded two things:
1. It’s far better to reduce emissions than rely on sequestration to avoid climate catastrophe
2. Ocean-based sequestration is more efficient than direct air capture.

A team of researchers have found a way to get container ships to help with sequestration of carbon into the ocean by using an accelerated natural process. It’s well known that modern fossil-fuel powered shipping is very bad for the planet so the researchers wondered what if we could leverage the movement of ships on the water to spread limestone over greater distances? They modelled it out and this approach of using ships as a way to spread the carbon sequestration method is quite efficient and better than a stationary setup.

Calcium carbonate dissolution is the dominant negative feedback in the ocean for neutralizing the acidity from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide. Mimicking this natural process, the accelerated weathering of limestone (AWL) can store carbon as bicarbonate in the ocean for tens of thousands of years. Here, we evaluate the potential of AWL on ships as a carbon sequestration approach. We show a successful prediction of laboratory measurements using a model that includes the most recent calcite dissolution kinetics in seawater. When simulated along a Pacific shipping lane in the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean–Darwin ocean–general circulation model, surface alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon increase by <1.4% after 10 years of continuous operation, leaving a small pH and partial pressure of carbon dioxide impact to the ocean while reducing 50% carbon dioxide emission in maritime transportation.

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China Leads Renewable Investments

- Adam Clare
A graph showing increasing investment in renewables with China outpacing other countries.
The country has nearly tripled spending on renewables since 2015

China is clearly winning the global race to renewable energy, with a near trebling of investment into the sector over the last decade. China’s manufacturing industry is primed to produce solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, and so on for the rest of the world. There’s a lot of profit to be made as the globe gets fully electrified and moves away from fossil fuels. The Republicans in the USA have guaranteed victory to China in their recent budget. Of course, other nations can all vie for second and ought to as the future is green power and whichever nation can produce renewable energy in the most economical way will dominate the later half of the century.

China is on an absolute tear installing wind and solar power. The country reached nearly 900 gigawatts of installed capacity for solar at the end of 2024, and the rapid pace of building has continued into this year. An additional 198 GW was installed between January and May, with 93 GW coming in May alone.

For context, those additions over the first five months of the year account for more than double the capacity of the grid in California. Not the renewables capacity of that state—the entire grid.

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