We’re kicking off the week talking about big wins in green power generation, as well as the resounding success of the first-ever shark rewilding programme.
A new study has found that solar energy is so cheap, it costs as little as €0.023 to produce one unit of power in the sunniest countries. Even in the UK, which sits 50 degrees north of the equator and is infamous for its grey weather, solar was still by far the cheapest option for large-scale energy generation.
Placing solar panels above crops goes by the term agrivoltaics. By building these panels high enough above the ground that farmers can continue to work underneath them, farmers are able to produce food whilst also keeping the income from the sales of generated energy.
The final plant in the region has ceased operations three years ahead of its planned retirement date. The closure of the facility paves the way for its owner to move ahead with plans to turn the site into a clean energy complex, including solar panels and battery storage systems.
A network of over 900 cross-party lawmakers from five Amazonian countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – have simultaneously presented proposals in their national parliaments to stop the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon region of their countries.
Back in 2022, more than 33 million Brazilians went to bed hungry. Now, with food security at the top of the geopolitical agenda and a return to policies that put people and farmers first, this number has plummeted.
The high cost of hair preservation techniques such as scalp cooling – which helps breast cancer patients increase their chances of keeping their hair – means it’s often out of reach for ordinary people. Starting next year, New York hopes to ease that burden with new legislation requiring insurance companies cover this cost.
In Uganda’s Mbale hospitals, simple but impactful methods such as CPAP breathing support, breastmilk feeding and skin-to-skin contact are improving infant rates of survival.
Since the explosion in use of large language models such as ChatGPT, educators across the globe have raised concerns that it could negatively impact the critical thinking skills of the students who use it. However, a growing body of students are rejecting AI in its entirety, opting not to outsource their learning to a machine and instead avoid it completely.
Once hunted extensively, the green turtle saw its numbers plummet and has been consistently listed as endangered since the 1980s. Thanks to mammoth global conservation efforts, from protecting eggs and releasing hatchlings on beaches to cutting back on accidental capture in fishing nets, new data suggests that the population is bouncing back.
Working with the IUCN Shark Specialist Group, Conservation International, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and 105 additional partners across 20 countries, the programme hopes to restore populations of the Indo-Pacific leopard shark to reefs where the species has all but disappeared.
