News

Japan has brought online Asia’s first osmotic power plant in Fukuoka, showcasing a new way to generate clean electricity using the natural interaction between freshwater and seawater. The system works by letting the two types of water mix through a special membrane, creating pressure that spins turbines and produces power. Because this process doesn’t depend […]

Leading climate scientists across the UK are cautioning the government against approving new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, arguing that it clashes directly with global efforts to limit warming. They say expanding fossil fuel production at this stage sends the wrong signal internationally, especially as countries are being urged to rapidly cut

A recent study from the University of North Carolina reveals that oyster reefs contribute much more to the environment than scientists previously realised. Beyond simply filtering water, oysters help remove harmful nitrogen by trapping it in ocean sediments, which improves water quality and reduces pollution levels. When this hidden benefit is included, the overall economic

A potential blockade or disruption in the Strait of Hormuz—one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes—has raised alarms over a looming global food security crisis. Nearly 20% of the world’s traded oil and a significant share of fertiliser exports, particularly nitrogen, ammonia, and urea from Gulf nations, pass through this narrow corridor daily. Countries

In drought-affected regions of Bangladesh, a civil engineer-led restoration effort has helped bring severely degraded wetlands back to life by re-establishing natural water flow and rebuilding lost hydrological connections. The project focused on repairing blocked canals, removing sediment buildup, and redesigning drainage pathways that had been disrupted by unplanned infrastructure and prolonged dry conditions. These

Construction at the wind energy development near Forrest has moved into a high-intensity phase, with 48 of the 69 planned turbine foundations already completed. Each turbine base involves deep excavation, steel reinforcement cages, and large-volume concrete pours designed to anchor turbines that can exceed 150–200 metres in total height. The project is part of a

A large-scale reef restoration project on the Great Barrier Reef has successfully cultivated and transplanted about 40,000 juvenile corals onto degraded reef areas, representing one of the most extensive “coral seeding” efforts attempted so far. The corals were grown from spawn collected during natural mass spawning events and also propagated in controlled nursery systems, where

New research provides a clearer mechanism for the unusual behaviour of sea ice around Antarctica, which expanded slowly for several decades before declining sharply after the mid-2010s. Scientists found that from the 1970s to around 2015, increased precipitation and snowfall freshened the surface of the Southern Ocean. This created a low-salinity surface layer that reduced

More than 1,500 giant tortoises have been reintroduced across parts of the Galápagos Islands in a major conservation effort aimed at rebuilding ecosystems disrupted by centuries of human activity and invasive species. The tortoises, once heavily reduced in number, are now being used as “ecosystem engineers,” helping to reshape vegetation patterns as they move slowly

Zettajoules (ZJ) are an extremely large unit of energy—equal to 10²¹ joules—used by climate scientists to quantify changes in the Earth system’s heat content. Recent measurements indicate that Earth’s energy imbalance is on the order of ~0.5 to 1 watt per square metre, which may sound small but, when integrated across the entire planet and