The Weekly Anthropocene, January 22 2025
Solar power and tortoise rewilding in Bangladesh, Rwandan e-bikes, ants for agriculture, vaquita hope, new Swiss inventions, the Green New Deal takes a bow, the once & future mammoth steppe, and more!
Bangladesh
Solar-powered irrigation pumps are taking off across the fast-growing South Asian nation of Bangladesh, presenting a win-win-win for small farmers by reducing dependence on expensive imported diesel for diesel pumps, reducing labor requirements due to lack of refueling needs, and avoiding air pollution. Another awesome example of the multifaceted benefits brought by the Solar Age!
The new post-revolution Bangladeshi government just launched plans to build ten new 50 MW grid-scale solar farms across the country, for a total of 500 MW. Superb!
In December 2024, six captive-bred elongated tortoises (Indotestudo elongata) and ten Asian giant tortoises (Manouria emys phayrei) were released into protected areas in different parts of Bangladesh. Both tortoise species are critically endangered, making this project highly significant for their future. These releases are among the first occasions when any captive-bred tortoises have been rewilded in Bangladesh, and community conservation efforts are underway to protect them. Great work!
Rwanda
On January 1, 2025, the Rwandan capital city of Kigali stopped registering new fossil fuel powered motorbikes (essentially a ban, not applying to bikes already in use), in an effort to speed the uptake of electric motorbikes and reduce air pollution. This will likely also boost domestic innovators: Rwanda has quickly become an Africa-leading tech hub home to cutting-edge startups including Zipline drone delivery, Munyax Eco solar water heaters, and Spiro and Ampersand electric motorbike makers. Ampersand (see photos) is growing particularly rapidly, with over 4,000 e-bikes on Rwandan roads and a spreading network of fast battery swapping stations. Great work!
Denmark & Germany
European wood ants (Formica polyctena) are among several ant species worldwide that have evolved to both spray formic acid as a weapon and host antimicrobial bacteria and fungi on their tiny little feet, both of which they end up spreading across the plants that they live and travel on. Now, researchers have found that between the acid and the “probiotics,” their presence on plants can be a highly effective protection from pests. Startups and scientists are working to scale up trails of ant footsteps and acid spray marks into a climate solution for agriculture and forestry that can scalably reduce emissions-heavy pesticide use.
A biologist in Denmark recently discovered that the presence of wood ants in orchards reduced the incidence of apple scab, a major yield-impacting disease, by 61 percent — and she’s founded ant-leasing startup AgroAnt to commercialize this impact. And in neighboring Germany, forest researchers are finding that acid-spraying wood ants can kill tree-boring beetles. Jay birds even appear to disturb ant nests just to trigger the ants into spraying acid on their feathers, likely in an effort to kill parasites.
We may someday see a widespread agricultural ant industry similar to the existing agricultural honeybee industry, in which insect owners bring their thousands of invertebrate workers to visit and serve client orchards. Fascinating!
Cameroon
A recent WWF wildlife survey in the Boumba Bek and Nki national parks of southeastern Cameroon found an estimated 1,004 critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) and 19,472 great apes (including both gorillas and chimpanzees), indicating that populations in the region have remained relatively stable since 2016 thanks to active community conservation. Good news!
Cameroon is reportedly planning to double its cultivation of coffee and cacao, two crops whose prices have increased due to climate change-induced droughts harming production in nearby West Africa, with support from international development funds.
In 2024, Cameroon became one of seventeen African countries (including even war-torn Sudan!) to offer one of the revolutionary new malaria vaccines as part of its routine childhood immunization program. Since 2023, more than 12 million vaccine doses have been delivered in these countries, likely saving tens of thousands of young human lives every year. This remains arguably the most important story on Earth!
Mexico
Mexico reports that it has met its management goals after finally implementing a long-delayed action plan mandating urgent efforts to protect the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), the most endangered cetacean species on Earth. (For context, as of 2024, there were an estimated six to eight individual vaquita left in the world, mostly imperiled by illegal fishing. A previous attempt to capture some vaquitas for captive breeding ended in tragedy, as it turns out vaquitas freak out and hurt themselves when captured, but did at least collect a sample of their tissue to freeze their genes for possible future de-extinction).
The main progress to report is a much-needed crackdown on the widespread illegal totoaba fishing that both traps vaquitas in nets and steals their food, with over 730 random checkpoints established, 5,000 vessels inspected, and over 38,000 meters of illegal gillnets destroyed. Furthermore, the Mexican Navy is now actively partnering with the ocean-patrolling Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to protect the vaquita.
At long last, we’re seeing vaquita protection efforts appropriate to the urgency of the situation. To quote a classic American sports mantra: it ain’t over till it’s over!
Mexican President (and former climate scientist) Claudia Sheinbaum announced a higher updated target of building 27 GW (27,000 MW) of new electricity-generating capacity in Mexico by 2030, with “a large percentage” of renewables.
President Sheinbaum also recently signed into law a package of constitutional reforms including unprecedented animal welfare language, including constitutional language directing Mexico’s Congress to pass general animal welfare legislation and a vaguely-defined amendment “prohibiting the mistreatment of animals.” Depending on how this plays out in future laws and court cases, the potential could be extraordinary!
Switzerland
Swiss startup Borobotics has invented an small-scale autonomous drilling robot capable of running off an ordinary household plug and powering a heat pump— essentially a backyard geothermal drilling rig, akin to balcony solar! It’s very, very early days, but the potential is extraordinary. Spectacular work!
Swiss researchers have invented a prototype biodegradeable 3D-printed fungal biobattery that could someday become a useful power source for agricultural and ecological sensors.
A fascinating new Swiss study (here’s a full PDF) recently that attached tiny tracker tags to 71 female common noctule bats has discovered that they “surf” on the edge of stormfronts for over 1,000 kilometers, in order to save energy in their migrations across central Europe. Storm-surfing bats: nature continues to astound us!
United States
In the final days of the Biden-Harris Administration, the Energy Department’s dauntless LPO1 announced nearly $23 billion in conditional commitments to Inflation Reduction Act-funded loans for eight utilities serving nearly 15 million customers across 12 states.
This is an unprecedented investment in America’s grid! If the loan is sustained under the new administration (very much TBD), the money is set to catalyze a truly epoch-making surge in much-needed power transmission lines, energy storage, reconductoring, and multiple gigawatt-scale new solar and wind projects.
A few more highlights from the many recently announced ecosystem and economy-boosting legacies of the Biden-Harris Administration:
The LPO finalizing a long-gestating loan for Ioneer Rhyolite Ridge, a massive lithium supply project in Nevada that could supercharge the air-cleaning U.S. EV industry by producing enough lithium for 370,000 EVs per year.
The LPO finalizing a loan of $584.5 million to build out much-needed grid-scale solar plus battery storage across Puerto Rico, achieving climate action and adaptation simultaneously through energy abundance and disaster resilience.
The LPO finalizing the loans for Project Polo’s massive 27-state virtual power plant, sustainable aviation fuel in Montana, and Rivian’s new EV factory in Georgia, all previously discussed in this newsletter.
The Interior Department finalizing the epic Western Solar Plan, setting the stage for much-needed rapid permitting of large-scale biodiversity-boosting solar farms (perhaps even matching China’s!) in strategically chosen lands across 11 Western states.
The Agriculture Department awarded $6 billion to rural clean power initiatives across America, the vast majority going to the nonprofit member-owned co-ops that provide electricity to 42 million Americans in over half of U.S. land area.
The Energy Department’s Office of Indian Energy announced $4 million in prize money for eleven Native American student teams working on projects that use solar power to support food growing, from agrivoltaics to solar-powered greenhouses. This is a very small investment compared to, say, the major LPO cleantech loans, but it’s a particularly symbolic win-win!
We got a Green New Deal, folks. We did. It happened. It seems like most Americans barely paid attention, but the legacy of the Biden-Harris Administration and the Inflation Reduction Act will nonetheless continue to build a better future for Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere for decades if not centuries to come. Spectacular work.
An under-construction green steel mill in California will make steel rebar with 85% lower emissions than the industry norm, using renewables-powered electric arc furnaces to melt scrap. It should be online by 2027. Great work!
The new Volkswagen ID.Buzz is the first-ever all-electric minivan to be sold in America. It just won the 2025 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year award.
Harvard-linked U.S. biotech startup Colossal Biosciences recently raised $200 million in investment, and now claims that they will bring back the woolly mammoth (or at least an Asian elephant embryo gene-edited with CRISPR to express woolly mammoth genes originating from frozen mammoth tissue found in Siberia) within six years. Leaving aside philosophical questions, this holds the potential for amazing progress on what could be a major rewilding-driven climate solution, as researchers have calculated that a future long-term renewal of the lost “mammoth steppe” ecosystem could sequester a whole lot of carbon and prevent runaway permafrost melting and methane release. This writer would consider it a very good thing if humanity manages to restore, if not a “true” mammoth, at least functioning mammoth genes, behaviors, and ecological roles to Anthropocene Earth. Fascinating work!
> The new post-revolution Bangladeshi government just launched plans to build ten new 50 MW grid-scale solar farms across the country, for a total of 500 MW. Superb!
The Bangladesh solar market has been on a rollercoaster ride over the past few months, with significant policy shifts creating both setbacks and opportunities for the industry.
As readers of this newsletter might recall from our previous coverage, Bangladesh had made headlines in late 2023 with an ambitious tender for 2-3GW of solar projects. However, in a surprising turn of events, these projects were cancelled by the new post-revolution government, marking one of their first major policy decisions in the energy sector.
Now, the same government has announced plans for a fresh tender, albeit at a notably reduced scale. While any progress toward solar adoption is positive, this scaled-back approach falls short of the solar energy victory many industry observers had been hoping for. The sentiment among solar installers has been particularly negative, with many expressing frustration over the cancellation of the original projects. This widespread disappointment may well result in tepid participation in the upcoming tender.
However, there's a silver lining in recent policy developments. A significant deregulation initiative might prove more transformative than the tender process itself. Historically, Bangladesh's electricity generation projects were controlled by a single central government body, creating a bottleneck for development. The new legislative framework aims to decentralize this authority, enabling city-level distribution companies and large businesses to enter into their own private power purchase agreements.
While this regulatory shift shows promise, we're still awaiting final rules for this merchant-centric approach. The devil will be in the details of these implementing regulations, which will determine how effectively the private sector can participate in Bangladesh's solar energy market.
For now, we'll keep watching these developments closely. The success of Bangladesh's solar energy transition may depend less on government-led mega-projects and more on creating the right regulatory environment for distributed, private-sector-driven development.
A melange of wonderful things to read more about this morning. Thank you!