Following the questions where they lead
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Ever since she was a child playing on her family’s farmland in Wisconsin, Bailey Flanigan was guided by her own selective, yet wide-ranging, curiosity. Describing her young self as spirited and a bit unruly, she directed her energies to everything from building booby traps to doing experimental construction projects to exploring an intense interest in […]
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Debriefed 17 July 2026: UK ‘firewave’ | Fossil-fuelled heat deaths | London’s Natural History Museum spotlights climate
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week Heat and firewaves ‘FIREWAVE’: Wildfires ravaged Europe and North America this week. France utilised water-dumping planes collecting from the Seine to contain a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris, according to the Associated Press. The Financial […]
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Q&A: Europe’s May and June heatwave deaths – and how they were counted
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of reports from public health authorities and scientists that estimate the deaths caused by Europe’s record-breaking summer heatwaves. In France, the national public health agency reported 2,025 excess deaths over the week where the heatwave peaked in June. Authorities in Germany and Netherlands put the excess death toll during […]
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A better way to turn 2D designs into 3D models for rapid prototyping
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Engineers often use vision-language models to produce new designs, such as for airplane or automobile components. To simulate how those components will perform in realistic situations, they’ll use tried-and-true computer-aided design (CAD) software to generate 3D models of those designs, which they can put through virtual crash or durability tests. Researchers from MIT and elsewhere […]
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3 Questions: Neural transparency and the future of AI design
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Millions of people are now designing their own personalized artificial intelligence companions, yet most have little idea how those creations will actually behave. In a new paper, MIT Media Lab Assistant Professor Pat Pataranutaporn and his graduate student researchers Anthony Baez and Sheer Karny introduce “neural transparency,” a tool that lets everyday users glimpse inside […]
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UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people. Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest. When it hosted COP26 […]
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Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
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. Key developments Global drought and heat DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led […]
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Government appoints single regulator to advance £175m Port of Tyne clean energy hub plans
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Entrance to the Port of Tyne The UK government has appointed the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) as Lead Environmental Regulator for the Port of Tyne’s proposed £175 million Clean Energy Park, in a move intended to accelerate approvals for a major offshore wind and clean energy development in North East England.1 The designation gives the […]
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Landmark shark conservation drive receives almost £1 million
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Pelagic sharks such as the porbeagle are among the most vulnerable marine species in UK waters. (image credit: Andrew Alsop, Whitewater Charters) A major new conservation project that will help to improve understanding and protection of some of England’s most iconic shark species has been awarded funding of almost £1 million by Natural England. Led […]
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What has really changed for the ‘responsible person’?
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Recent updates to the international standard governing the repair, overhaul, and reclamation of equipment used in hazardous areas have seen notable updates to the Responsible Person role – placing much more responsibility on the function. Karl Metcalfe, Technical Support at the Association of Electrical and Mechanical Trades, explains how the definition of the role, and […]
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Unpacking the Value of the PRN System
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Alex Hilton is Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Beyondly. Sponsored content: This article contains sponsored content. By Alex Hilton of Beyondly The UK packaging recycling system is under scrutiny. Calls to reform the Packaging Recovery Note (PRN) system have grown louder alongside the rollout of Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) and amendments to Plastic […]
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Helping AI models to meet the real world
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Systems using artificial intelligence to enhance forecasting, planning, and decision-making in businesses have been proliferating in recent years, but in many cases, they lack the detailed, specific information about the organization itself, limiting the usefulness of those tools. Devavrat Shah, a principal investigator at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), faculty member with […]
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Can AI build a jet engine? JARVIS Challenge tests role of AI copilots in tough-tech engineering
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Artificial intelligence has rapidly transformed software engineering. Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) can create huge volumes of code and documentation; machine-learning algorithms can monitor performance and detect security vulnerabilities. But when the task is to conceive, design, and make a complex physical system such as a jet engine, are those AI tools equally […]
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Michigan Court of Appeals Decision Largely Upholds Michigan PSC’s Renewable Energy Siting Process
Michigan has recently taken steps to centralize and streamline the siting of renewable energy projects, in response to ongoing challenges from local opposition. In 2023, the Michigan state legislature enacted, and Governor Whitmer signed, Public Act 233 (PA 233) which establishes limits on the types of restrictions that local governments can place on renewable energy […]
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28 quotes from next UK leader Andy Burnham on climate, net-zero and fossil fuels
The UK’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has remained tight-lipped on his views on climate change during his leadership campaign. When asked his views on reversing Labour’s manifesto pledge to stop new North Sea drilling in June – a move that the oil-and-gas industry and right-wing media have pushed for in recent months – he […]
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Grid congestion driving shift towards smarter renewable operations
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Grid constraints in countries such as the Netherlands are driving renewable operators to adopt new software tools capable of coordinating large fleets of solar and battery assets in real time The Netherlands’ worsening grid congestion is providing one glimpse of how renewable operators across Europe may be forced to manage increasingly complex portfolios of distributed […]
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UK growth “out of reach” without cheaper electricity, warn CBI and energy experts
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Around 2.7 million businesses currently receive little or no protection from escalating power costs. Britain’s ambitions for stronger economic growth and industrial electrification will remain out of reach unless business energy costs are brought down, according to a new report from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and Energy UK.1 The document argues that persistently […]
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Solar becomes EU’s largest power source as June output hits record high
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Photovoltaic power array in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France Solar power supplied a quarter of the European Union’s electricity in June for the first time ever, overtaking nuclear (21%), gas (15%), wind (14%)hydro (12%), and coal (8%). Analysis published by energy think tank Ember reports that solar generated a record 52 TWh of electricity across the EU in […]