The Weekly Anthropocene, March 12, 2025
English beavers, the Tuas automated port, Canadian narwhals, Anemoi, India's solar manufacturing, farming lyrebirds, Nigeria's grid, the Colossal woolly mouse, and more!
United Kingdom
In early March 2025, Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber) were legally released in England for the first time since being driven locally extinct in the 1600s. (Scotland has allowed beaver reintroduction since 2009, and now has a thriving population). The first English beaver reintroduction brought four individuals from Scotland to Dorset, with the many more reintroductions to follow in the coming months set to bring widespread benefits for biodiversity and water management. Great work!
Plans have been submitted for the largest-yet floating solar farm in Britain.
EV registrations reached a record-high of nearly 400,000 and heat pump sales reached a record-high of nearly 40,000 in the UK in 2024 as the global cleantech transition accelerates.
UK researchers have invented a new perovskite solar cell that is much tougher and longer-lasting, a potential breakthrough for commercialization of the efficient design!
This year’s Chelsea Flower Show is showcasing AI-assisted gardening, with plant and soil sensors connected to a text interface that integrates the data to allow real-time “conversations” about an individual tree’s health or need for watering.
Singapore
Singapore is successfully building the world’s largest-ever fully automated port. The Tuas mega port has handled 10 million shipping containers since its launch in 2022, and is set to be able to manage 65 million per year by the 2040s. The Tuas port uses a fleet of over 200 fast-charging electric autonomous ground vehicles to move cargo, helping cut the port’s carbon emissions by 50% compared to industry norms. The port plans to soon generate solar power on-site and add over 200 more AGVs. Amazing!
Canada
A brand-new study used drone photography in Canada’s Arctic territory of Nunavut to greatly increase human knowledge of the unique tusk of the narwhal (Monodon monoceros). Narwhals were observed to use their tusks in a multitude of complex behaviors, including herding and stunning Arctic char fish as well playful “sword fights” between males.
Canada’s governing Liberal Party elected Mark Carney as its new leader (and, given that they currently have a parliamentary majority, the next Prime Minister) by an overwhelming majority. He will lead the party in the upcoming 2025 election. The former governor of both the Canadian and UK central banks, Carney has long been a global leader on climate action, and this newsletter heartily endorses him.
Morocco
Morocco has approved six major green hydrogen projects totaling $32.5 billion of American, European, Saudi, Emirati, and Chinese corporate investment, in a possible new dawn for a long-disappointing cleantech sector. Green hydrogen has so far not been a very economically competitive sector, with the inherent thermodynamic losses involved leaving it trailing behind ever-better batteries and power lines as a means of moving clean energy around1 — but if anywhere can finally deliver competitively cheap green hydrogen products, it might be electrolyzers in solar-swathed Morocco2.
European Union
As the EU steps up defense spending to resist Russian aggression, the bloc is simultaneously pursuing a new Clean Industrial Deal, a guideline clean reindustrialization strategy that hopes to spur mobilization of over €100 billion in investment for EU clean manufacturing!
After 18 months of testing, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has developed and is currently using Anemoi3, a historic new AI weather forecasting framework and derived model that is already about 20% more accurate than current top-flight conventional methods. AI using Anemoi can predict the track of a tropical cyclone (aka typhoon or hurricane) 12 hours further ahead of previous weather forecasting methods, making it potentially a vital mass-life-saving tool for Anthropocene Earth. Anemoi is open-source and available to all. Great work!
The great rewilding of Europe continues, with the continent now home to approximately 23,000 wolves, 20,500 brown bears, 9,400 Eurasian lynx, and 1,300 wolverines.
Electricity prices in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium recently went negative for hours at a time as abundant renewable energy surged onto the grid, benefiting consumers and previewing the dawning age of “too cheap to meter” clean power.
The first stage of a 225 MW pumped hydro energy storage project in the Extremadura region of Spain has been switched on.
In February 2025, renewables generated 54.1% of electricity across all of Spain — and all carbon-free sources (renewables plus nuclear) generated 76.3%. It’s happening!
Developer Svea Solar has secured land agreements to build eight new solar parks in Sweden totaling 500 MW of new clean energy capacity. The same company recently inaugurated Sweden’s first large-scale agrivoltaics food-plus-electrons park.
Brilliant Finnish “air-to-food” startup Solar Foods has received another €10 million EU grant, to help build the second-ever Solein factory! An underrated rising marvel.
India
India has opened its first-ever AI-powered solar manufacturing line at Goldi Solar’s Kosamba factory in the state of Gujarat. The new line uses robotics to accelerate solar cell manufacturing and AI visual analysis to automate quality control and sorting, for a total throughput of 10,000 solar cells per hour (for context, two common solar panel sizes are 60-cell and 72-cell) and an eventual total manufacturing output of 14 GW (14,000 MW) of solar capacity per year.
Vikram Solar announced plans for a new 1 GWh solid-state battery factory.
Construction began on a new 5 GW solar cell and module factory in Uttar Pradesh.
The Indian government is reportedly finalizing a major new $1 billion solar subsidy plan to further boost their domestic solar manufacturing sector and reduce dependence on cleantech colossus China. It may become law within months.
Australia
A fascinating new study has discovered that Australia’s superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae, known for their beautiful long tails and complex voices) appears to practice a form of farming, raking large amounts of soil and leaf litter on the forest floor in a way that promotes the presence of more and larger prey invertebrates. Wow!
Forty adult frogs and more than 3,000 tiny froglets from the critically endangered Baw Baw frog species (Philoria frosti) were released in the high-altitude forests of the Baw Baw plateau east of Melbourne. There were previously less than 500 individuals in the wild, making this influx from Zoos Victoria’s breeding program a potential turning point for the species. Great work!
The Australian government has announced a National Renewable Energy Priority List that will accelerate permitting for 32 proposed clean power projects that together would add 16.5 GW of generation capacity and 6.3 GW of storage. Superb!
A new review from Australian researchers identifies six models of ground robot (not including flying drones) currently being systematically used to monitor solar farms!
Nigeria
The populous African nation of Nigeria has the infrastructure to generate 13,000 MW (13 GW) of electricity, but generally actually delivers less than 4.5 GW to consumers due to a woefully shoddy national grid. Now, an internationally funded grid overhaul is building much-needed new power transformers, substations, and transmissions, leading to electricity output surging over 30% to a peak near 6 GW in March 2025, with hopes than 10 GW can be reached in 2026. Great work!
United States
Despite the flailing destruction of the cruel and corrupt chaos-mongers mauling the executive branch, people across America still strive to build a brighter future.
In an extraordinary biotechnological feat, de-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences has made a major step towards its stated goal of reviving the woolly mammoth. The researchers have CRISPR-edited seven genes for thick, woolly fur and fat metabolism (both vital for cold tolerance) in mouse embryos, which when grown became the new “Colossal woolly mouse.”
Next steps include behavioral tests for cold tolerance ahead of possible future edits to Asian elephant embryos. Medium to long-term, the ecosystem revivification and carbon sequestration potential of bringing back woolly mammoth-like creatures is enormous — Alaska’s North Slope alone could support over 70,000 mammoths today4. WOW! Truly amazing work.
The U.S. installed nearly 11 GW of new grid-scale battery storage in 2024, and new EIA data reports that nearly 18 GW more is set to come online in 2025. (Check out the in-depth post on this from Cleanview). Spectacular!
In the first week of March 2025, the Texas state grid set new record highs for wind energy production, solar energy production, and grid battery power discharge.
Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) had a record-high spawning season in the rivers of the central California coast over the winter of 2023-24. An estimated 15,000 adult coho salmon returned to spawn, the highest since monitoring began!
The first 11 Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) were reintroduced to the U.S. in Arizona in 1998 after the subspecies was extirpated from the wild in the 20th century. Now, the latest annual survey has found that there are at least 286 individual Mexican gray wolves in America, up 11% from the previous year.
Researchers have developed shelf-stable freeze-dried bacteria packets that can be sprayed onto construction sites to help form biocement.
As Congressional budget talks continue, twenty-one House Republicans have signed a letter in support of keeping the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.
A fascinating new plant has been discovered in Big Bend National Park, Texas, with the first-ever observation of this species made with citizen science app iNaturalist (check it out yourself!) in 2024. The woolly devil (Ovicula biradiata) is a brand-new genus, with unique furry leaves and horn-like flower rays.
Though there is a smaller but still considerable market for hydrogen products not meant to be burned for clean energy, like ammonia (NH3) fertilizer.
Named after the Greek gods of the winds! Awesome.
Particularly liked the pick of the mammoth furred mouse, thanks.
More good news to start the day! India continues to impress with its rapid roll-out of solar. And yes, that wooly mouse is an impressive piece of bio-engineering but for me is a bit alarming.