The Weekly Anthropocene, July 30 2025
Electrification, anti-malaria edits, India's clean energy, Barbados threadsnakes, Mount Everest drones, Baltic seals, solar in Iraq, the UK, & Maine, jaguars in Brazil, resilient Boston, and more!
The Big Picture: Electrification
The Rocky Mountain Institute and Ember released a spectacular new big-picture article titled “The long march of electrification” contextualing the modern renewables super-boom as the latest step in electricity’s advances since the 1880s. Some key points:
About 75% of humanity’s final energy demand can now be economically electrified, thanks to lots of technical progress made since 2000!
Electricity is supplying more and more of total energy use across the economy.
Most excitingly: “Rapid electrification, even at the scale envisioned in most deep decarbonisation scenarios, does not require a significant acceleration in global electricity demand growth…at the global level, deep electrification is essentially a continuation of a long-standing trend of electricity demand growth.” Electrification, globally, is progressing near the speed we need it to be! RMI and Ember expect this to accelerate “structural decline” for fossil fuels.
The Big Picture: A New Shield Against Malaria
Mosquito-borne malaria parasites have long been one of the deadliest enemies of humanity, causing 263 million infections and nearly 600,000 deaths (mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa) in 2023 alone. Now, an international research team has developed a new CRISPR-Cas9 “scissors” gene drive method that replaces mosquitoes’ L224 allele with the malaria-suppressing Q224 allele, altering the FREP1 protein to prevent parasites from reaching the salivary glands. Once introduced, the edit then spreads throughout the mosquito population until they all can no longer carry malaria parasites. Joining vaccine successes, this could be humanity’s greatest shield yet — a technology that could realistically one day end malaria! Superb.
The Big Picture: Ecogeopolitics
The UN International Court of Justice has ruled that countries failing to protect Earth from climate change could be in violation of international law, and defined a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” as a human right. The ICJ cannot enforce its rulings, so this essentially “has no teeth” but it’s nonetheless heartening!
China and the European Union issued a symbolic new joint statement promising new efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cooperate on clean energy.
India
Fast-progressing India, humanity’s most populous nation, has installed 22 GW (22,000 MW!) of solar and wind capacity in the first half of 2025, 56% more than in the first half of 2024! If the trend continues in the near-term, India will overtake U.S. clean energy installation numbers this year, and if it continues in the mid-term, India will hit Prime Minister Modi’s ambitious goal of 500 GW of non-fossil power by 2030! And more ADB and UN funding is on the way to invest in India’s cleantech sectors.
Amazingly, India is already beginning to retire some fossil fuel infrastructure (and many new-built coal plants simply aren’t being used!) as demonstrably cheaper renewables account for all of the fast-rising new demand for electricity and then some.
Furthermore, India’s solar manufacturing has grown even faster, now producing 91 GW per year. That’s in excess of domestic demand, so India is already beginning to join China as an electrotech exporter. This is all absolutely SPECTACULAR news!
Barbados
The Barbados threadsnake (Tetracheilostoma carlae) is the world’s smallest serpent, thin as a strand of spaghetti and only ten centimeters long. With females laying only one egg at a time and the last known sighting 20 years ago, it was feared extinct — until it was rediscovered under a rock by a Re:wild ecological survey in March 2025!
Iraq
TotalEnergies has begun construction on a new large-scale solar project in the Basra region of southern Iraq. The first phase of 250 MW is set to be online by the end of 2025, rising to 1 GW (1,000 MW) by 2028, and a seawater treatment plant is also being built in the area to supply local agriculture. For context, Iraq had only 42 MW of solar at the end of 2024, but plans to build 12 GW (12,000 MW) by 2030. Great work!
Nepal
Hardworking Sherpa mountain experts are now working alongside drones made by Chinese titan DJI to help clean up the now-omnipresent garbage on the slopes of Mount Everest. From mid-April through mid-May 2025, DJI drones operated by Nepal company Airlift carried over 280 kilograms of trash off the mountain. There’s lots of potential to scale up drone clean-ups, with many drone-makers interested!
Chad
International NGO Sahara Conservation has signed a deal with the government of Chad to manage the Ouadi-Rimé Ouadi-Hachim Faunal Reserve, an absolutely massive 77,950 km2 conservation area (about the size of Scotland!) spanning the Sahara and Sahel. It’s home to the scimitar-horned oryx, addax, dama gazelle, African wild dog, striped hyena and many more species.
As the new “subcontactor” running the reserve, Sahara Conservation has already developed a 10-year management plan in collaboration with local stakeholders.
United Kingdom
The UK’s largest-ever solar farm has come online, with the Cleve Hill Solar Park adding 373 MW of clean capacity to the grid in Kent. Its accompanying 150 MW grid-scale battery storage system is still under construction.
The UK government has published a new national plan to reach 45-47 GW of solar by 2030, up from almost 19 GW (19,000 MW) in May 2025. One key element will be removing barriers to rooftop solar and legalizing plug-in solar like Germany has!
Parliament has created a draft regulatory framework to allow cultivation of precision-bred plants, using limited gene-editing to grow crops with lower pesticides, fertilizers, and emissions. Final approval is likely close. Innovation advances!
Finland
A new study from the University of Helsinki analyzed aerial counts and other datasets to estimate that the Baltic ringed seal (Pusa hispida botnica) population has likely roughly quintupled from about 5,000 individuals in the 1970s to about 25,000 in 2024, thanks to reduced hunting and phasing out toxins like DDT. Great news!
New Zealand
New Zealand startup Aspiring Materials has developed a brand-new patented process that produces multiple highly valuable minerals from the common rock olivine while leaving no toxic waste behind. Their multi-stage chemical and electrolysis process “takes apart” ground-up olivine sand, with outputs about 50% silica (a useful input for making Portland cement), 40% magnesium, and 10% iron mixed with traces of nickel-manganese-cobalt hydroxide (“NMC”), a highly valuable battery mineral, with only salty brine left at the end. Fascinating work!
U.S. de-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences, known for their ongoing wolf and mammoth biotech projects, has announced a new resarch effort to try to bring back the giant moa, New Zealand’s lost flightless mega-bird, in partnership with LOTR director and moa aficionado Peter Jackson and the local Ngāi Tahu Research Centre.
Brazil
As Brazil nobly withstands the current U.S. administration’s pro-authoritarian persecution, a lot of fascinating work is going on in the South American titan.
Brazil reached 52 GW of total cumulative solar capacity in 2024, and is set to install 19.2 GW more in 2025. In 2024, solar provided 22.2% of Brazil’s electricity. Great work!
In 2020, wildfires ravaged the seasonally flooded Brazilian Pantanal wetland, which for decades has been known as the highest-density jaguar population site. Now, a fascinating new study has found that the jaguar population appears to have increased substantially in the years since the wildfire, thanks to many resident jaguars surviving, more cubs being born and “a large number of immigrants” from other areas. The Pantanal wetlands appear to have become a star climate refuge for Brazil’s jaguars!
After years of community conservation work, the population of jaguars in Brazil’s Iguaçu National Park has more than doubled since 2010.
Operation Green Shield, a UAE-coordinated anti-crime crackdown in late June and early July 2025, focused on taking down transnational environmental crime (mining, logging, and wildlife trafficking) networks across the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. 1,500 officers were mobilized to conduct over 350 coordinated raids leading to the arrest of 94 people and the seizure of assets worth $64 million, including 310 tonnes of minerals and over 2,100 live animals. Great work!
United States
Though the nightmarish current regime continues to sabotage and shame America, people across the country are still working to build a brighter future.
From 2020 to 2024, the number of public EV chargers in the United States doubled to nearly 200,000, while roughly quadrupling in Europe and China over the same period. Despite federal attacks, 2025 will likely be a record-high year for fast EV charger installation, as U.S. companies are still making long-term charger investments.
This writer’s home state of Maine has fast-tracked procurement of nearly 1,600 gigawatt-hours of new renewable energy projects (enough to supply 13% of Maine’s electricity!). The plan is to get them built before federal tax credits expire, with strong bipartisan support from the state legislature. Notably, Maine will prioritize solar farms building on land contaminated by PFAS “forever chemicals,” providing a financial lifeline to stricken farmers. A recent state government analysis calculated that “reaching 100% clean energy by 2040 would save the average Maine household around $1,300 per year.” Truly spectacular work — very proud of the Pine Tree State!
Gates-backed green steel startup Hertha Metals is now producing one ton of steel per day at their pilot facility near Houston. They’re using a new one-step proprietary furnace system, and claim that that their steel will be cheaper than regular steel by the time they reach commercial production in 2031.
Researchers at Rice University in Texas have invented a new scalable method to make bacterial plastic, without using fossil fuel feedstocks. Awesome work!
Over 160 cities and counties in the United States are now using SolarApp+, an instant permitting government services app to grant building permits to solar power projects in hours instead of days or weeks!
Boston, Massachusetts is becoming “one of the most climate resilient [coastal cities] in the world” despite sabotage efforts by the federal government, with over 100 climate resiliance projects planned to prevent seawater flooding into the city during king tides and nor’easter — including nature-based approaches like wetlands and elevated parks with living seawalls! An updated building code mandates designing for at least one meter of sea level rise, and the strategy is now reportedly “market-driven” with widespread developer and client interest. Spectacular work!
A clean and safe energy project spearheaded by President Biden and Governor Whitmer has succeeeded as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave approval to restart the closed Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, the first-ever U.S. nuclear restart. It should send much-needed clean electrons to the grid by the end of 2025!
Leading tree grower David Milarch has planted over 225 giant sequoias in Detroit, Michigan, where they appear to be thriving in the wet climate!
A court has upheld a first-in-the-nation air quality rule in Greater Los Angeles set to gradually mandate reducing smog-causing nitrogen oxide emissions from fossil-gas boilers and water heaters. Cleaning the air and further incentivizing electrification!
Google has signed a major new strategic partnership and undisclosed but substantial investment in startup Energy Dome, with the goal of deploying its cutting-edge compressed carbon dioxide batteries, a new method of large-scale energy storage!
Awesome news on electrification! I gave a presentation on climate change this past weekend at a Chicago Public Library, and I got a lot of pushback on electrification. The biggest concerns were mining and cost. I think the "economical" piece of the Ember data is crucial for cost. As for mining, I think people are right to be concerned, but we have to keep pushing for mining to be improved while recognizing the immense damage (and heavy mining) of the fossil fuel status quo. Hannah Ritchie has a great piece on this: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/energy-transition-materials?utm_source=publication-search
Amazing brief Sam - got my dose of hope :)