Fully electric “flying vehicles” could join Paris’ transport network “within five years”, according to the French capital's public operator RATP.

Canberra will be effectively powered by renewable energy from October 1, according to the ACT's Climate Change Minister.

Known for their ability to remove methane from the environment and convert it into a usable fuel, methanotrophic bacteria have long fascinated researchers. But how, exactly, these bacteria naturally perform such a complex reaction has been a mystery. Now an interdisciplinary team at Northwestern University has found that the enzyme responsible for the methane-methanol conversion catalyzes this reaction at a site that contains just one copper ion.

There are now over 2 million solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the U.S., according to new figures. The 2 million mark comes three years after installations hit 1 million, a figure it took the industry 40 years to reach. The numbers, from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), were released Thursday.

NASA-funded research is investigating the possibility of developing all-electric airliners that produce no greenhouse gas emissions. The project, led by scientists at the University of Illinois, is exploring the potential of liquid hydrogen fuel cells as an environmentally friendly power source. By using cooled, condensed liquid hydrogen instead of hydrogen gas, clean power can be generated without needing heavy pressurised storage tanks.

The UK has gone a week without burning any coal to make electricity - the first coal-free week since 1882. Britain has relied on burning coal for power since the Industrial Revolution, which began in the UK in the 18th Century and spread to other parts of the world. The Industrial Revolution saw new factories being built and a massive increase in the use of fossil fuels. The world's first coal-fired power station was opened in London in 1882.

Advancements in zero-emission fuel cells could make the technology cheap enough to replace traditional gasoline engines in vehicles, according to researchers at the University of Waterloo. The researchers have developed a new fuel cell that lasts at least 10 times longer than current technology, an improvement that would make them economically practical, if mass-produced, to power vehicles with electricity.

The main political opposition in the Norwegian parliament, Labour, has dropped its support for oil drilling in the environmentally sensitive Lofoten islands in northern Norway. This action paves the way to protecting the island archipelago from the oil industry as there’s now a solid majority in the Norwegian parliament to block oil drilling on the islands.

Scientists are hoping a new upgrade at U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) could finally make fusion power a reality — by harnessing the power of a silvery metal called lithium. As part of the Lithium Tokamak Experiment, a team of researchers are coating the inside walls of the reactor with lithium, the same stuff in the batteries in a wide range of electronics, to ensure that plasma remains super hot and highly pressurized inside the reactor — important conditions to get a shot at generating power from the reaction.

Leading economist and climate change policy expert Professor Ross Garnaut says that Australia could be powered 100 per cent by “intermittent” renewables by the early 2030s, and have a grid that is both reliable and secure and cheaper than it is now.

Whenever I visit the Sahara I am struck by how sunny and hot it is and how clear the sky can be. Aside from a few oases there is little vegetation, and most of the world's largest desert is covered with rocks, sand and sand dunes. The Saharan sun is powerful enough to provide Earth with significant solar energy.

The proposal would transform air-conditioning units into machines that capture carbon dioxide and transform it into fuel.The context: Air-conditioning units are energy intensive, causing emissions that contribute to rising global temperatures (which then, ironically, cause more people to buy AC units).

Coal began firing US homes and factories in the 1880s. A century later, the cheap, plentiful fuel was America’s primary one (pdf) for electricity generation. But its long reign is slowly coming to an end. In April, renewables eclipsed coal generation in the US for the first time. The Energy Information Administration estimates renewables outperformed coal by 16% in April and will generate 1.4% more in May.

n 1920 Arthur Eddington, an English astrophysicist, gave a lecture to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the internal structure of stars. In it, he hypothesised that what makes the sun shine—then a matter of much debate—was some sort of nuclear reaction. “This reservoir”, he said, “can scarcely be other than the subatomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service.

America's clean energy revolution is on the verge of a tipping point. The renewable energy sector is projected to generate more electricity than coal during the month of April, according to a recent report published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. That's never happened before.

Researchers have built a more efficient, more reliable potassium-oxygen battery, a step toward a potential solution for energy storage on the nation's power grid and longer-lasting batteries in cell phones and laptops. In a study published Friday in the journal Batteries and Supercaps, researchers from The Ohio State University detailed their findings centering around the construction of the battery's cathode, which stores the energy produced by a chemical reaction in a metal-oxygen or metal-air battery.

Los Angeles could produce the nation's largest "virtual power plant" by linking homes equipped with solar panels and batteries, solar industry says.

China aims to complete and start generating power from an experimental nuclear fusion reactor by around 2040, a senior scientist involved in the project said, as it works to develop and commercialize a game-changing source of clean energy.

As young people rightly demand real solutions to climate change, the question is not what to do — eliminate fossil fuels by 2050 — but how. Beyond decarbonizing today’s electric grid, we must use clean electricity to replace fossil fuels in transportation, industry and heating. We must provide for the fast-growing energy needs of poorer countries and extend the grid to a billion people who now lack electricity. And still more electricity will be needed to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by midcentury.

To tackle global warming countries need to decarbonize their energy systems. These are the nations that are doing the most to embrace the transformation.

Under the Arabian sun, a monumental construction effort is making headway. Located deep within Dubai's desert interior, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park -- named after the emirate's ruler and the UAE's vice president and prime minister -- continues to grow and has just passed another milestone.

Around three-quarters of US coal production is now more expensive than solar and wind energy in providing electricity to American households, according to a new study. “Even without major policy shift we will continue to see coal retire pretty rapidly,” said Mike O’Boyle, the co-author of the report for Energy Innovation, a renewables analysis firm. “Our analysis shows that we can move a lot faster to replace coal with wind and solar. The fact that so much coal could be retired right now shows we are off the pace.”

The rapidly dropping cost of renewable energy has upended energy economics in recent years, with new solar and wind plants now significantly cheaper than coal power. But new research shows another major change is afoot: The cost of batteries has been declining so unexpectedly rapidly that renewables plus battery storage are now cheaper than even natural gas plants in many applications, according to a report released this week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

On Thursday, Florida Power and Light (FPL) announced that it would retire two natural gas plants and replace those plants with what is likely to be the world's largest solar-powered battery bank when it's completed in 2021. The utility says its plan, including additional efficiency upgrades and smaller battery installations throughout its service area, will save customers more than $100 million in aggregate through avoided fuel costs. FPL also says its battery and upgrade plan will help avoid 1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Electric vehicle pioneer and energy group Tesla says its fleet of more than 550,000 EVs has already delivered savings of more than 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases and their equivalent, and the output of its solar products is also twice that of energy consumed by all those electric cars. In the company’s first “impact report” released overnight, Tesla says more than 10 billion miles (16 billion kilometres) have been driven by its fleet, while supercharging network has produced more than 595 gigawatt- hours (GWhs) of energy, saving the equivalent of over 75 million gallons of gasoline.

See tips and advice on how you can go green at your home.

Tesla and other electric cars are great for the environment. However, they pale in comparison to electric buses. According to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), electric buses will save an astounding 270,000 barrels of diesel demand in 2019—every single day. The vast majority of electric buses are found in China, where many mega-cities are closing in on 100 percent electric-powered public transport.

Most solar farms align their solar arrays in rows and columns to form a grid. A new solar power plant in Datong, China, however, decided to have a little fun with its design. China Merchants New Energy Group, one of the country's largest clean energy operators, built a 248-acre solar farm in the shape of a giant panda.

For most of the industrial era, a nation's carbon emissions moved in lock step with its economy. Growth meant higher emissions. But over the past decade or so, that has changed. Even as the global economy continued to grow, carbon emissions remained flat or dropped a bit.

Two Florida lawmakers want all the energy used in the Sunshine State to come from renewable sources like solar and wind power by 2050. State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, and Sen. José Javier Rodríguez, D-Miami, have filed identical bills HB 1291/SB 1762. The measure directs the Office of Energy within the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to create a unified plan to generate 100 percent of Florida's energy from renewable sources by 2050.

Norway has said its $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, should sell stocks in oil and gas exploration companies, in a move that is the biggest divestment from hydrocarbons yet. The Government Pension Fund Global, which was built off Norway’s oil revenues, should begin phasing out $8 billion held in 134 firms to reduce the fund’s risk from volatile oil prices, the country’s finance ministry said in a statement on 8 March.

The cost of deploying wind and solar energy continued to decline significantly in Minnesota last year, and wind — even without federal tax subsidies — may be the state's cheapest source of new electricity. Those conclusions were included in a report released Monday by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which annually surveys the U.S. power generation sector for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, an industry-led group.

“Kingsmill Bond” certainly sounds like a proper name for a City of London financial analyst. He looks the part, too: gray hair expertly trimmed, well-cut suit. He’s lived in Moscow and Hong Kong and worked for Deutsche Bank, the Russian financial firm Troika Dialog, and Citibank. He’s currently “new energy strategist” for a small British think tank called Carbon Tracker, and last fall he published a short paper called “2020 Vision: Why You Should See the Fossil Fuel Peak Coming.”

Electric cars are expensive. The sticker price for electric vehicles (EVs) has historically exceeded that for comparable gasoline cars. But that’s less true every month. The arrival of cars like Kia’s $33,145 electric Soul, GM’s $36,620 Bolt, and Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3—not to mention the $23,800 Smart EQ—have pushed the price of top-reviewed EVs below the median price for cars in the US. And that’s before thousands of dollars in state and federal incentives.

After reaching 65% renewables earlier this month, Germany soared past that to 72.4 per cent last week, with wind power accounting for most of it.