Leipzig’s 16 hydrogen refuse trucks were reportedly available for deployment only 45.6% of the time after two years in service.
Garbage collection is not a technology demonstration. Municipalities need trucks that leave the depot every working morning, finish predictable routes, operate compactors through hundreds of stops and come back ready to do it again. That is why refuse collection has become such a useful test of competing zero-emission drivetrains. Battery-electric … [continued]
Ports need more investment for bigger ships, resilience and decarbonization just as some of the bulk cargoes that funded them begin to decline.
Ports are being asked to make infrastructure decisions that will last thirty, forty or fifty years while several of the assumptions that paid for their existing infrastructure are changing at the same time. Ships are getting larger, requiring deeper channels, larger cranes and more capable tug fleets. Climate disruption is … [continued]
OceanX survived severe Yagi wind and waves with little reported nacelle inclination, but its stayed, weather-vaning architecture is the more interesting result.
OceanX gave me two immediate reasons to be skeptical. It puts two turbines on one floating platform, and it puts the rotors downwind of their supports rather than in front of them. I had looked at both ideas years ago and found good reasons why the wind industry had largely … [continued]
Green Lightning produces measurable nitrate, but its claimed fertilizer replacement is vastly larger than the nitrogen it actually fixes.
Green Lightning really does make nitrogen fertilizer from air and electricity, but it makes very little of it compared with what its marketing says it can replace. Nitrogen is not merely something that encourages a plant to grow. Nitrogen atoms become part of the plant itself, incorporated into proteins, chlorophyll, … [continued]
The Netherlands cut its 2040 hydrogen forecast by more than half as electrification displaced hydrogen across power, heat, buildings and transport—but the remaining forecast still assumes substantial demand growth.
Three years is a long time in hydrogen strategy. The Netherlands’ 2023 National Energy System Plan projected roughly 460 petajoules of gaseous hydrogen demand in 2040. Its 2026 National Energy System Plan update cuts that central estimate to about 200 PJ, a reduction of roughly 57%. This is especially interesting … [continued]
PORTLAND, Oregon — A new report released today by the Sierra Club and Breach Collective finds that NW Natural has taken advantage of Senate Bill 98 (SB 98), a law that it authored and supported, to pour more than $60 million in ratepayer dollars into out-of-state biomethane projects that have … [continued]
Tugboats combine brief demands for very high thrust with repeated operation inside the same ports, making their duty cycle unusually well suited to electrification.
Tugboats do not initially look like good candidates for battery propulsion. A harbour tug has to shove, pull and control ships weighing tens or hundreds of thousands of tonnes, sometimes in wind, current and confined channels where losing thrust is not an acceptable outcome. Modern ship-assist tugs consequently carry propulsion … [continued]
DNV says shore power, plug-in hybrids and fully electric ships could materially reduce future shipping fuel demand, but those pathways sit outside the simulation producing its headline 2050 fuel requirement.
DNV’s new Maritime Forecast to 2050 puts a very large number on shipping’s future demand for low-carbon molecules. In its strongest global-regulation scenario, internationally operating ships above 400 gross tonnes require about 185 million tonnes of oil equivalent of low-GHG fuel in 2050, roughly 7.7 to 7.8 exajoules. That implies … [continued]
US Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) is a longtime organic farmer. She’s also a member of the House Agriculture Committee who is calling on the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to stop hemming and hawing and, instead, get on the ball to implement recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report … [continued]
More than 300,000 plant-protection drones now perform roughly 203 million hectare-treatments annually in China. The market has moved beyond adoption into service, maintenance, renewal and operating standards.
Agricultural spray drones are no longer an emerging technology in China. They are ordinary farm machinery at extraordinary scale. China entered 2026 with about 309,000 plant-protection drones, and those aircraft performed roughly 203 million hectare-treatments during 2025. A hectare treated three times counts as three hectare-treatments, so that figure measures … [continued]
