Environment Agency announces largest-ever expansion of its enforcement team

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Carbon Neutral Regulation in AI Training

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The Environment Agency (EA) has announced a fivefold increase in its team of enforcement officers and lawyers tackling water pollution, from 41 roles in 2023 to 195 by March 2026, with seemingly more to come in 2026. An announcement from the regulator noted that water company environmental performance has continued to decline in recent years, […]

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LampreyMMAUV can attach itself to the hulls of ships or submarines, and recharge its own batteries (image credit: Lockheed Martin). A versatile submersible developed by US defence technology group Lockheed Martin provides the capabilities of a Multi Mission Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (MMAUV), while also being able to recharge its power supply en route to its destination. […]
Donald Trump has overseen more retirements of coal-fired power stations than any other US president, according to Carbon Brief analysis. His administration’s latest efforts to roll back US climate policy have been presented by interior secretary Doug Burgum as an opportunity to revive “clean, beautiful, American coal”. The administration is in the process of attempting […]

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For data scientists, working with high-dimensional data is part of daily life.

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Four projects have been awarded funding from the Circular Electricals Fund, which supports innovation in product design, material use and recovery and business models. The award is run by not-for-profit group Material Focus, and follows a rigorous application and assessment process. Out of 65 applications, the four selected candidates come from University College London, British […]

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For more than a decade, MIT Associate Professor Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli has used artificial intelligence to create new materials. As the technology has expanded, so have his ambitions. Now, the newly tenured professor in materials science and engineering believes AI is poised to transform science in ways never before possible. His work at MIT and beyond […]

China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole. This extends a “flat or falling” trend in China’s CO2 emissions that began in March 2024 and has now lasted for nearly two years. The new analysis for […]

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight. This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here. This is the last edition of Cropped for 2025. The newsletter will return on 14 January 2026. Key developments […]

The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the US from the intergovernmental science panel for nature “harms everybody, including them”, according to its chair. Dr David Obura is a leading coral reef ecologist from Kenya and chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the world’s authority on the science of nature […]

The UK government has secured a record 7.4 gigawatts (GW) of solar, onshore wind and tidal power in its latest auction for new renewable capacity. It is the second and final part of the seventh auction round for “contracts for difference” (CfDs), known as AR7a. In the first part, held in January 2026, the government […]

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James J. Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and faculty co-lead of the Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, is embarking on a multidisciplinary research project that applies synthetic biology and generative artificial intelligence to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The research project is […]

The hot, dry and windy weather preceding the wildfires that tore through Chile and Argentina last month was made around three times more likely due to human-caused climate change. This is according to a rapid attribution study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) service. Devastating wildfires hit multiple parts of South America throughout January. The fires […]

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Even as the government announces contracts for new solar farms as part of its Clean Power 2030 plan, the question persists: can the renewable energy sector scale up production sustainably? New research from Northumbria University, published in Nature Communications, appears to show that it can – and will save billions of tonnes of carbon emissions […]

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Clothing enters the residual waste stream (in Germany, in this case) The European Commission has adopted new measures under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) to prevent the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear. The rules will cut waste and environmental impact while levelling the playing field between brands and retailers already […]

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Latvian startup Deep Space Energy has raised €350K in pre-seed funding from investors, in addition to €580K in public contracts and grants from the European Space Agency (ESA), NATO DIANA, and the Latvian government. The funding will support a further move towards commercialisation of the group’s novel radioisotopic generator The pre-seed funding round was led […]

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When your product has a green heartbeat, whether it’s a carbon-tracking app or an AI-enabled waste-sorting platform, every delay in shipping code feels like a delay in helping the planet. That’s why more climate-tech founders, project managers, and sustainability-driven executives look beyond in-house recruitment and partner with focused, fully staffed engineering units. You’ve probably heard […]

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The signals that drive many of the brain and body’s most essential functions — consciousness, sleep, breathing, heart rate, and motion — course through bundles of “white matter” fibers in the brainstem, but imaging systems so far have been unable to finely resolve these crucial neural cables. That has left researchers and doctors with little […]
On Monday, February 9, 2026, the Sabin Center submitted an amicus curiae brief to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court) in the matter of the Request for an Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States with Respect to the Climate Change Crisis. The brief explains how climate science can help inform […]