The Weekly Anthropocene, June 25 2025
The Melanesian Ocean Reserve, coal-free Ireland, Javan gibbons, echidna rediscovery, a beaver in Portugal, solar build-outs from Iraq to China, electric aircraft at JFK, Gammatron, ID.Buzz, and more!
Melanesia
At the recent UN Ocean Conference in Nice, the governments of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, two island polities in Melanesia announced their commitment to create the Melanesian Ocean Reserve, which would protect all of their territorial waters plus - if they agree - those of Papua New Guinea and the French territory New Caledonia. If successful, this would supercharge indigenous-led efforts to protect an area of life-rich ocean more than three times the size of Alaska from illegal fishing. Amazing!
Ireland
On June 20, 2025, Ireland closed its last coal plant, becoming the 15th coal-free country in Europe! Wind power now generates 37% of Irish electricity, and though fossil gas is still a majority, solar’s growth is just beginning. Spain is also planning to close its last coal plants later in 2025! Great news.
Indonesia
Community conservationists in Indonesia are planting forest corridors in central Java to reconnect the fragmented habitat of the endangered Javan gibbon (Hylobates moloch), which has only an estimated 4,000 individuals left in the wild. Great work!
Indonesia has signed a deal with Singapore to create a new integrated green industrial zone in its Riau Islands province, between Singapore, Sumatra and Borneo. It will focus on building out a solar manufacturing supply chain and methods of decarbonizing heavy industry. Great work!
A new study in the Cyclops Mountains of Indonesian-ruled New Guinea used camera traps and indigenous knowledge to confirm the 2023 rediscovery of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi, aka “payangko”), one of only five monotreme egg-laying mammal species known to humanity. Spectacular work!
Portugal
For the first time in over 500 years, a wild beaver is living in Portugal! The last Portuguese beavers were likely hunted out in the late 1400s, but a camera trap now confirms that a young adult has dispersed from Spain’s growing beaver population into Portugal in 2025. Another milestone in the epic rewilding of Europe! Great news.
China
China installed 93 GW (93,000 MW) of new solar power in May 2025, four times more than in May 2024 and a new all-time monthly record. That’s more solar installed in one month than any one other country installed in all of 2024. This brought China’s total cumulative installed solar capacity to over 1 terawatt (1 TW equals 1,000 GW or 1,000,000 MW), out of a total 3.61 TW of electricity-generating capacity from all sources. (The U.S. total is just over 1.3 TW). China has installed more than 1 GW (1,000 MW) of solar every day for the first five months of 2025. Absolutely astounding!
China is rapidly converting disused coal mines to solar farms, with a new report identifying 90 solar farms on former coal mines generating 14 GW (14,000 MW!) of power, as well as 46 more solar farms totaling 9 GW in planning stages. Great news!
An unprecedented super-fast mass decarbonization of heavy industry is quietly underway in China. The China Iron and Steel Association estimates that 80% of the entire nation’s crude steel manufacturing capacity will complete ultra-low emission upgrades by the end of 2025 - a matter of months. Extraordinary work!
BYD’s new ultra-fast EV chargers that provide hundreds of kilometers of range in just five (5) minutes (that’s more than one kilometer per second plugged in!) were recently demoed at an auto show in Beijing. It will likely roll out very fast.
Chinese researchers have created a tiny solar panel for the human eye. Made of tellurium nanowires, this “retinal nanoprosthesis” can replace damaged photoreceptors and send electrical signals to the brain’s visual cortex via the optic nerve, making it one of an emerging range of new technologies worldwide that are curing blindness. It’s already worked in mice and macaques - humans are next. Wow!
As America persecutes its vital scientists, China is trying to recruit them. Nobel Prize-winning U.S. neuroscientist Ardem Patapoutian recently told the New York Times that the Chinese government offered him “20 years of funding” at “any city, any university” after his federal NIH grant was illegally frozen by the Trump administration. He declined. Others won’t. Relatedly, the prestigious Nature Index reports that China is rapidly expanding its lead over the U.S. in world-leading scientific research.
Iraq
UGT Renewables, a U.S. developer, has signed a deal with the government of Iraq to build 3 GW (3,000 MW) of solar power, 500 GWh of energy storage, and 1,000 kilometers of high-voltage power lines! This would be a transformative mass clean electrification upgrade - Iraq had 42 MW of solar power in 2024. Excellent work!
South Africa
Researchers have rediscovered the Blyde rondawels flat gecko (Afroedura rondavelica), a species previously only known from two specimens in 1991, sighting 20 individuals after a helicopter drop-off to the mountaintop where they were previously seen. It seems to be “not at risk of going extinct in the immediate future.” Great work!
As South Africa weathers dangerous floods and droughts, it’s also seeing an epic electrification boom! The country built a record-high 1.1 GW of solar in 2024, and lots more is on the way as the once-stagnant grid is dynamized by new contenders.
Researchers at a wind farm near Cape Town found that painting red stripes on the turbines reduced bird deaths by 80% — another “blade patterning” success!
A private preserve in South Africa is testing a brand-new AI-powered animal-identifying “smart gate” to increase habitat connectivity for elephants, with the hope of someday creating human-manageable extended elephant migration routes. Wow!
United States
The Senate has released early proposed changes to the loathsome president’s nightmarish budget, and they appear somewhat less terrible for clean energy (or maybe not?!), senselessly cutting clean energy tax credits for solar and wind but keeping them for nuclear, hydropower, and — critically — fast-growing battery storage and geothermal. The situation is still very much in flux and changing rapidly!
California just approved a gigantic new solar and battery storage project, set to be built on no-longer-productive former agricultural land in Fresno County. The Darden Clean Energy Project will be built in 1.5 to 3 years, and when complete will include 1.1 GW (1,100 MW) of solar power plus an immense 4.6 GW (4,600 MW) grid-scale battery storage complex, enough to power 850,000 homes for 4 hours. As of 2025, that would make Darden the largest grid-scale battery project on Earth, though bigger ones may be built soon! Furthermore, Darden is the first-ever project approved under California’s brand-new and much-needed fast-track permitting process. Superb work!
Years of dedicated conservation work have brought about a renaissance for the Florida grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum floridanus), America’s most endangered songbird. A captive breeding and reintroduction program is underway, and the wild population has increased to around 200 today (up from a nadir of 50-60 in 2017) thanks in part to proactive interventions to protect nests from flooding and fire ants. The broader Florida dry prairie ecosystem also benefits from this great work!
Also in Florida, the Miccosukee Tribe recently announced a new conservation partnership buying then protecting land to form a wildlife corridor. Excellent work!
As a new report finds that batteries have become so cheap and effective that they can store and dispatch solar energy almost every hour of the year, the ongoing U.S. battery boom is keeping the national grid stable during extreme weather. From April 2024 through April 2025, U.S. grid-scale battery capacity increased by 40%, with about 180 new facilities coming online. Bloomberg reports that batteries’ ability to match supply to demand by arbitraging electrons across time is already preventing power outages during extreme heatwaves. Another case of renewables building resilience!
JFK Airport, serving New York City, recently saw its first-ever landing of an electric aircraft! The Alia CX300 aircraft, made by Vermont startup Beta Technologies, carried 4 passengers for 45 minutes from Long Island to Queens with an energy cost of just $7, compared to $160 in fuel costs for a helicopter making the same trip. Beta is also developing an eVTOL model, Alia 250, which won’t need a runway to take off or land. Quiet, clean, and efficient all-electric “air taxis” are on the way! Great work.
Massachusetts startup Factorial has unveiled Gammatron, a historic new AI digital twin simulation platform built to accelerate battery cell technology progress. It’s already being used in EV development, and the potential is incredible! Superb work.
It’s a record-high breeding season for endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys kempii) on the beaches of Texas, with 383 nests found on the state’s coast as of June 13, 2025 — breaking the previous record of 353 nests in 2017. Awesome!
A first-ever census has found that solar grazing, the beneficial co-location of sheep grazing on solar farms, is spreading across America even faster than thought! In 2024, over 113,000 sheep grazed amid solar panels on 129,000 acres of land at 230 sites across the United States. Check out this fast-growing database of U.S. agrivoltaics!
Fast-advancing startup Windfall Bio has successfully concluded a trial in which its commercial methane-eating microbes (“mems”) removed 85% of methane emissions from the manure lagoon of a dairy farm in California and transformed it into organic fertilizer. An epic new scalable intervention to reduce harmful methane emissions!
Volkswagen has partnered with Uber on plans to roll out all-electric autonomous taxis in Los Angeles with a full fleet available by 2026, forming a new rival to Waymo and Tesla’s “robocab” efforts. Volkswagen’s new fully autonomous ID.Buzz EV comes with 13 cameras, 9 lidars, and 5 radars, carries four passengers, and unlike its rivals it includes “Mobility as a Service” software that empowers anyone who buys it to immediately operate their own turnkey driverless-car business. Fascinating potential!
Sam your reporting on progress worldwide on renewable energy and endangered species is amazing, thorough, and inspiring. Thank you for this work!
Love it. Please keep in mind that essentially all technologies, especially in the energy/waste management and “computation” sectors, are transitioned and eventually replaced by something better over 5, 10 or 20 ish year periods.