Geothermal power currently provides only a tiny fraction of the nation’s electricity. But as states ramp up their transitions to renewable electricity, some leaders see a big role for geothermal as a stable, renewable power source. Used in the United States since 1960, geothermal plants pipe steam or hot water ... read more

At a recently opened Burger King in Vienna, there aren’t any animal products on the 40-plus-item menu. The Whoppers use a vegan patty from The Vegetarian Butcher, a Dutch company; the “cheeseburgers” come with vegan cheese. The “chicken” burgers and nuggets use vegan chicken. The Ben & Jerry’s ice cream ... read more

By Jake M Robinson, Christopher Daniels, and Martin Breed It’s been more than two years since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of us vividly recalls the first confirmed cases being reported in our home towns. COVID-19 spread across the planet at lightning speed, and the confirmed ... read more

In rural Wyoming, a sprawling field will soon be filled with dozens of shipping container-sized boxes that can pull CO2 from the atmosphere to help combat climate change. The captured CO2, compressed into a liquid, will travel through pipelines into nearby wells that are drilled thousands of feet underground, storing ... read more

A third of the country underwater. Crops washed away. Some 33 million people homeless. Billions of dollars of damage. A looming food crisis. And still, the unprecedented rains come. Pakistan’s mega-monsoon dumped up to 700% of the usual August rainfall on parts of the country, with floodwaters boosted by glacial ... read more

Humans produce more concrete than any other material on the planet. It is the literal foundation of modern civilization—and for good reason. Concrete is strong, durable, affordable, and available to almost every community on the planet. However, the global concrete industry has a dirty little secret: it alone is responsible ... read more

Clean freshwater is critical for sustaining human life. However, 1.1 billion people lack access to it worldwide. Desalination represents an increasingly popular way of addressing this. Desalination is the process of extracting salt from saline water to make it drinkable. There are two main types of desalination. In the first–called ... read more

Environment, social, and governance investing faces a credibility crisis. Critics rightly question whether ESG’s growth has produced meaningful social or environmental benefits, pointing their fingers at lax rating agencies and greenwashing fund managers. If governance gets any attention, it’s as a dutiful side dish of risk reduction. That’s a problem ... read more

It’s been a summer of climate disasters in the U.S.: Brutal heat waves from California to Texas. Catastrophic flooding in Kentucky and Missouri. Wildfires in Alaska that burned an area larger than Connecticut, and, across the rest of the U.S., hundreds of other fires burning now. Droughts that have affected ... read more

At an e-bike library on the east side of Buffalo, if someone needs help getting to work or running errands, they can check out a free electric bike for two weeks. If they need it longer, they can bring it back to be recharged and check it out again. [Photo: ... read more

This article is from Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. Since December of last year, over 6,000 workers in 230 Starbucks stores have organized themselves into a union. The Starbucks unionizing drive is a bright spot for a labor ... read more

After weeks of relentless monsoon rains—and after a heat wave in the spring that made glaciers melt faster—more than a third of Pakistan is underwater. More than 1,300 people have died. Millions more have lost their homes. The scale of the devastation is visible from space. In the city of ... read more

Five years ago, Nike decided to rethink apparel manufacturing: What would it look like if it were fully designed for sustainability? “We endeavored to start from scratch, bare bones, nothing,” says Carmen Zolman, vice president of innovation apparel design at Nike. “And then make every decision as if we were ... read more

There are few things simpler than a bowl of cereal. Faster to prepare than even a piece of buttered toast, cereal gets millions of people, children especially, fed and out the door as quickly as possible each morning. But what if cereal could be so much more? This was the ... read more

For six years, Alexander Wright lobbied local politicians, foundations, and investors to fund his vision for a grocery store on Buffalo’s East Side. The African Heritage Food Co-Op, he promised, would make affordable, healthy produce accessible in a neighborhood with few convenient options besides dollar and corner stores. The Buffalo ... read more