The Weekly Anthropocene, January 15 2025
The North Sea ecological renaissance, cleantech in India, China, and Ukraine, New Clark City in the Philippines, bonobos in the DRC, Chuckwalla National Monument, U.S. wildlife crossings, and more!
United Kingdom
The British coasts of the North Sea are experiencing the beginnings of an ecological renaissance, thanks to a wide range of conservation developments including new MPAs and limits on fishing. North Sea herring populations fell by 97% from the 1950s to 1980s due to overfishing, but have since bounced back to nearly half of their pre-overfishing numbers. Bottlenose dolphins have returned in the last five years and are now calving off Yorkshire, while humpback and minke whales are also coming back. And the gray seal population is absolutely thriving, with a record-high nearly 4,000 baby seals born on the beaches of Norfolk this season.
Notably, the “artificial reef” effect of the recent North Sea offshore wind farm boom has very likely also accelerated this biological efflorescence! An entire metric ton of mussels can grow on the foundation of a single turbine, and studies have found that gray seals, cod, and lobster seem to preferentially spend time around wind farms compared to turbine-less areas. The gray seal baby boom in particular is probably due to the presence of more and more life-growing offshore wind farms offshore, in another spectacular example of a clean energy/rewilding win-win. Excellent news!
The Economist has a great short article summarizing the growing rewilding movement in the UK, with species from fungi to butterflies now benefiting from conservation translocations in addition to major megafauna like bison.
Outside Norwich, Europe’s largest vertical farm (so far!) is now capable of producing 1,000 tonnes of leafy greens, herbs, and salads per day. (It’s also solar-powered). Their product is already cost-competitive with traditionally farmed basil, and has a lower carbon footprint plus potential to get cheaper still. Spectacular work!
In addition to shutting down their last coal plant, the UK saw record-high clean energy generation in 2024, with 56% of Great Britain’s electricity from UK renewables plus nuclear, 16% from electricity imports, and just 26% from fossil fuels (i.e. gas)!
The Starmer government is planning extensive new undersea power cables to further interconnect Britain’s grid with European neighbors, helping speed clean energy development. The World Grid is being built!
The largest grid-scale battery storage facility in all of Europe (so far!) is under construction on the site of a former coal mine in Lanarkshire, Scotland, set to have 1 GW (1,000 MW) of capacity once Phase 2 is complete in 2027. Major cleantech projects like this will solve intermittency and replace the last bits of fossil fuel on the grid — and many more are on the way in Britain! For context, almost 90% of Scottish electricity was generated from low-carbon sources in 2024. Great work!
Ukraine
Ukraine has built between 800 and 850 MW of solar in 2024 (mostly on home and business rooftops) while heroically fighting off a Russian invasion. The decentralized nature of solar power makes it harder to target and easier to rebuild, arguably making it an intrinsically “anti-authoritarian” energy technology. Future potential is immense: the first agrivoltaics projects in farm-rich Ukraine might begin in 2025!
“It is much harder to attack 15 solar power plants rather than one thermal power plant…
If each of us could have a solar power plant or solar panels on the roof, or solar panels on the ground, we would be OK with any blackout or any attack.”
— Yuliana Onishchuk, Energy Act for Ukraine Foundation.
Australia
When the 2019-20 “Black Summer” bushfires burned across much of Mount Kaputar national park in New South Wales, Australia, they devastated in one fell swoop the entire habitat of one strange yet beloved species: the human hand-sized and brightly fluorescent Mount Kaputar pink slug. An estimated 90% of the entire species was killed, but some survived (possibly by hiding underground or in rocky crevasses) and they’ve since made a resounding recovery, with high population densities recorded and a slug “baby boom” chronicled by local citizen scientists. Great news!
China
Two recent energy storage milestones from China, featuring emerging technologies that are becoming useful complements to batteries:
The world’s largest-ever pumped hydro grid-scale energy storage facility is now fully operational. The Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station in Hebei province has twelve 300 MW reversible pump units storing power from a nearby 10 GW solar and wind base, for a total of 3.6 GW (3,600 MW) of storage capacity.
And the world’s largest-ever grid-scale compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility is also fully operational, compressing air in two underground salt caverns in Yingcheng City, Hubei province for a power output of up to 300 MW.
Amazing work!
Côte d’Ivoire
Ivorian cacao farmers are deploying new technologies to prepare for compliance with the EU anti-deforestation regulations set to come into effect by end-2025, using satellite mapping, mobile apps, and barcodes to create a traceable supply chain for zero-deforestation chocolate from the West African nation. Great work!
Philippines
The Philippines is building a new city from scratch, designed expressly to withstand climate disasters with ample drainage and green spaces. New Clark City is currently under construction on the site of a former U.S. military base, has already won $2.5 billion in investment, and is expected to be home to 1.2 million people when completed in 2065. Many major structures have already been built, including a national government operations center so that New Clark City can immediately serve as a back-up Philippines capital if the low-lying, flood-vulnerable current capital of Manila is incapacitated by future extreme weather events. Fascinating work!
India
India has installed a record-high 24.5 GW (24,500 MW) of solar capacity in 2024, double the amount installed in 2023! Exponential clean energy growth has arrived. Some more cleantech highlights from history’s most populous-ever nation-state:
ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India is building a 975 MW hybrid wind/solar park in the state of Andhra Pradesh to help power its steel production!
Uttar Pradesh is now soliciting developers to build floating solar at 35 dams and reservoirs in the state!
A commercial-scale lithium battery recycling plant has opened in Uttar Pradesh.
The state of Ladakh is planning a pilot agrivoltaics project to co-locate solar and livestock grazing!
Mahindra has opened a new EV factory in the state of Maharashtra, 100% renewables-powered and featuring over 1,000 robots, to build its electric SUVs.
Production has begun at the largest solar factory in India — so far. By Waaree Energies in the state of Gujarat, it will soon produce 5.4 GW (5,400 MW) per year!
The rise of India will be one of the defining stories of the 21st century, and accelerating Indian cleantech deployment will be vital in determining when we eventually stabilize Earth’s atmosphere. Heartening news!
Democratic Republic of Congo
A recent study has found that the bonobo population in Salonga National Park stayed relatively stable from 2002 to 2018, calculating an estimated population 8,000–18,000 individual bonobos and a possible slight decline but no statistically significant change in recent decades. Interestingly, the study also found that bonobos were more common near ranger patrol posts.
Bonobos (Pan paniscus) are found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Salonga is the species’ preeminent stronghold. It’s good to see that one of our great ape cousin-species is still holding up relatively well in the Anthropocene!
United States
In 2024, for the first time ever, wind and solar combined generated more electricity than coal in the USA, as renewables continue to surge and coal plants retire. Excellent! Here are some specific examples, from the last several weeks alone:
The 577 MW Fox Squirrel Solar farm is online, and now the largest solar farm in Ohio!
The U.S. BLM approved the 600 MW Jove solar farm, set for public lands in Arizona.
The titanic Sunstone solar-plus-storage project has won approval in Oregon. When complete, it will feature 2.4 GW (2,400 MW!) of solar plus extensive battery storage!
In 2024, U.S. carbon emissions fell by 0.2%, while the economy grew by a whopping 2.7%. Decoupling continues — modern countries can be rich and green!
Canary Media has a superb article on the revolutionary U.S. cleantech manufacturing super-boom under President Biden. A massive victory, still relatively unknown!
A magnificent 96% of new electricity-generating capacity built in the U.S. in 2024 was carbon emissions-free! World-transforming solar accounted for the lion’s share at 60% with a record-high 34 GW (34,000 MW) built, with remaining sources including batteries 23%, wind 10%, and much-hyped nuclear 2%. These numbers are why the environmental movement REALLY needs to realize that building new things is now overwhelmingly beneficial for climate action by speeding clean energy abundance plus the replacement of fossil fuels!
The ever-enterprising DOE LPO just made a conditional commitment for a loan to build the Willow Rock compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility, using underground caverns in the former oil-drilling region of Kern County, California. At 500 MW, this could become the world’s largest compressed air energy storage facility when complete — overtaking the CAES project that just opened in China.
President Biden used executive authority to designate two new federal protected areas in California. The Chuckwalla National Monument and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument together protect 848,000 acres of California desert and mountains, an area larger than Luxembourg. Notably, the Chuckwalla National Monument was designed expressly to allow clean energy power lines to cross it, enabling links from desert solar farms to western cities. Another great case of wildlife/renewables coexistence!
The Biden-Harris Administration’s Department of Transportation has announced $125 million for sixteen Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-funded pilot projects to deploy wildlife crossings across America! The projects funded include design and planning for potential future wildlife crossings in eight states, plus current build-out of specific wildlife crossings in eight others: Idaho, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Maine, Missouri, and Florida. Human-wildlife coexistence ascendant!
Bonobos ... the apes that resolve conflict not by war, but by kissing. We could learn a lot from them.
Pictures of seals, lobsters preferring wind turbines, and solar as anti-authoritarian energy. This is everything I didn't know I needed to hear this week to keep up the climate fight!