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• “A Bog Is Like A Minefield” • Talking about defence, people usually imagine tanks, drones, or hardened borders. Peatlands usually don’t come to mind. But their wetness, inaccessibility, and limited passability make them a factor of relevance for security policy. The issue combines climate action, biodiversity, and water management with defence. [Euronews]

Bog (Luke Hodde, Unsplash)

• “Solar And Storage Provide Over 90% Of All New Power Added To The US Grid In Q1” • The US added 7.8 GW of solar capacity in the first quarter of 2026, as solar remained the leading source of new power added to the grid. Despite changing tax policy and regulatory actions targeting clean energy, 91% of new capacity were solar and energy storage. [CleanTechnica]
• “A Pair Of Bills Now Head To Ayotte’s Desk” • Governor Kelly Ayotte kicked off 2026 with a call to open New Hampshire to advancement and expansion of nuclear power. None of the three bills that came would do. Lawmakers say they have successfully worked with the governor to draft a compromise bill that pushes nuclear power. [New Hampshire Bulletin]
• “‘EU’s Environmental Policy Must Be Part Of Defence Strategy,’ Commissioner Roswall Says” • The environmental policy of the EU should now be considered a key part of Europe’s defence strategy, according to Jessika Roswall, European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience, and a Competitive Circular Economy, in an interview. [Euronews]
• “GM Announces A Sodium-Ion Grid-Scale Battery Storage Developed In The US” • GM announced an effort for sodium-ion batteries in partnership with Peak Energy, with an investment by GM Ventures. It’s a deliberate bet on matching the chemistry to the right application rather than forcing one solution across every use case. [CleanTechnica]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

QRIS dirancang sebagai standar pembayaran nasional yang memungkinkan berbagai aplikasi pembayaran saling terhubung dalam satu ekosistem. Hal tersebut memberikan fleksibilitas lebih tinggi dibandingkan metode transfer konvensional.

Beberapa keuntungan yang sering dirasakan pengguna antara lain:

• Proses transaksi berlangsung dalam hitungan detik.
• Mendukung berbagai aplikasi e-wallet dan mobile banking.
• Mengurangi risiko kesalahan input data pembayaran.
• Antarmuka sederhana sehingga mudah digunakan oleh pemula.
• Verifikasi pembayaran cenderung lebih cepat.

Kombinasi kemudahan tersebut membuat metode pembayaran berbasis QR semakin populer di kalangan pengguna yang mengutamakan efisiensi.

Slot QRIS Terpercaya Mengutamakan Keamanan Transaksi

Selain faktor kecepatan, keamanan menjadi salah satu alasan utama mengapa banyak orang memilih platform yang menyediakan pembayaran melalui QRIS. Platform yang memiliki sistem transaksi terpercaya umumnya menerapkan perlindungan data pengguna, enkripsi informasi, serta proses validasi pembayaran yang lebih baik.

Pengguna juga disarankan untuk memastikan bahwa platform yang dipilih memiliki layanan pelanggan responsif, informasi transaksi yang transparan, dan sistem pembayaran yang bekerja secara stabil agar pengalaman penggunaan menjadi lebih nyaman.

Proses Pembayaran Lebih Efisien untuk Aktivitas Sehari-hari

Efisiensi menjadi nilai tambah yang sulit diabaikan. Dengan QRIS, pengguna cukup membuka aplikasi pembayaran favorit, memindai kode yang tersedia, memasukkan nominal sesuai kebutuhan, lalu melakukan konfirmasi.

Tidak diperlukan lagi proses berpindah aplikasi untuk menyalin nomor rekening atau melakukan pengecekan manual secara berulang. Bagi sebagian orang, langkah sederhana ini dapat menghemat waktu sekaligus meningkatkan kenyamanan dalam bertransaksi.

Di era digital saat ini, kemudahan seperti tersebut menjadi salah satu faktor penting dalam memilih platform dengan sistem pembayaran modern.

Tips Memilih Platform Slot QRIS yang Terpercaya

Sebelum menggunakan layanan apa pun, ada beberapa hal yang patut diperhatikan agar pengalaman transaksi berjalan lebih aman dan nyaman.

1. Pastikan Sistem Pembayaran Jelas

Platform yang baik biasanya memberikan informasi lengkap mengenai metode pembayaran, langkah transaksi, serta estimasi waktu pemrosesan.

2. Perhatikan Reputasi Layanan

Cari ulasan dari berbagai sumber mengenai kualitas pelayanan, stabilitas sistem, dan pengalaman pengguna lain untuk memperoleh gambaran yang lebih objektif.

3. Cek Dukungan Customer Service

Layanan pelanggan yang aktif selama jam operasional atau bahkan 24 jam dapat membantu menyelesaikan kendala transaksi dengan lebih cepat.

4. Gunakan Metode Pembayaran Resmi

Selalu lakukan pembayaran melalui kanal resmi yang disediakan platform dan hindari membagikan informasi pribadi kepada pihak yang tidak dikenal.

Inovasi Pembayaran Digital Membawa Pengalaman yang Lebih Praktis

Integrasi QRIS dalam berbagai layanan digital menunjukkan bagaimana teknologi mampu menyederhanakan proses pembayaran. Pengguna kini dapat menikmati transaksi yang lebih cepat tanpa harus menghadapi prosedur yang rumit.

Tidak mengherankan apabila slot QRIS terpercaya dengan proses pembayaran yang lebih efisien semakin banyak dicari karena menawarkan kombinasi antara kemudahan, fleksibilitas, dan pengalaman transaksi yang praktis. Selama pengguna tetap memilih platform yang memiliki sistem transparan dan menjaga keamanan data, metode pembayaran berbasis QR dapat menjadi solusi modern yang mendukung kebutuhan transaksi digital secara lebih efektif.

Ten U.N. officials are calling on Russia to immediately release Daria Egereva, an Indigenous international climate advocate, and her colleague Natalia Leongardt, both of whom have been jailed for six months on terrorism charges, ahead of a key court hearing this week. 

Egereva, who is Indigenous Selkup from Russia, is co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, which represents Indigenous peoples’ perspectives at United Nations gatherings. Russian authorities arrested her and Leongardt on December 17, just weeks after Egereva returned from the COP30 climate conference. Leongardt, a former intern at the U.N. headquarters in Geneva, has spent her career working on educational programs for Indigenous peoples in Russia.

The two face accusations of participating in a terrorist group due to their past involvement in the Aborigen Forum, an informal network of Indigenous advocates that the Russian government shut down two years ago. But U.N. experts say they’re concerned the arrests are reprisals for participating in U.N. meetings and are part of a broader shift in Russia to crack down on civil society freedoms including Indigenous activism. 

“We urge your Excellency’s Government to immediately and unconditionally release Ms. Egereva and Ms. Leongardt from detention, to drop all charges against them as stemming from their peaceful human rights activities, and to ensure that they are able to continue their legitimate human rights work and their cooperation with the United Nations’ bodies and mechanisms without fear of intimidation or reprisals,” read the letter from the U.N. officials, who included the U.N. special rapporteurs for the environment, Indigenous peoples, and human rights in the context of climate change. 

Their letter, sent in April, was made public last week by the U.N. Russian officials do not appear to have responded. Egereva and Leongardt are expected to appear in court on Thursday in Moscow, where they could be sentenced to as long as two decades in prison. Their imprisonment has brought international condemnation, with more than 100 organizations calling for their release at April’s U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City. 

Egereva in particular has been a fixture in international climate discussions and was arrested in December shortly after returning from COP where she spoke publicly on the importance of having more Indigenous women participate in climate talks. “Women are one of the most vulnerable groups within Indigenous peoples, so we are working to ensure that Indigenous women are included in all climate negotiations affecting their rights, and their interests, and their priorities,” she said at COP on November 21.

Read Next The uncertain future of the UN’s leading voice on Indigenous rights Anita Hofschneider

Egereva was expected to be in Germany this week for the Bonn Climate Change Conference, where officials are preparing for another COP climate gathering this fall. Her incarceration prompted the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change to vote Tuesday to extend Egereva’s term, making her a third co-chair until her release. That unprecedented move was made in solidarity with her detainment, as typically there are only two co-chairs.

The U.N. officials wrote that since her arrest in December, Egereva has been denied regular phone calls and visits with her husband and children. “Over recent months, she has only been able to see her husband at three court hearings, during which Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia (FSIN) officers prohibited any personal communication or contact,” their letter said. 

The same officials are worried not only about the conditions that Egereva and Leongardt are enduring, but also the impact their detainment could have on U.N. participation. “We are concerned about the chilling effect on Indigenous advocacy, international cooperation and engagement with the United Nations, and human rights defenders’ work that their prosecution is prone to generate,” the letter states. 

Friends and colleagues of Egereva and Leongardt say that their work exemplified routine advocacy on behalf of Indigenous peoples and was not extremist or reflective of the “terrorism” allegations. 

“We want everyone to see that they are part of a huge network and that the work they’ve been doing is completely legitimate, completely within regular diplomatic channels,” said Kate Finn, a citizen of the Osage Nation and executive director of the Tallgrass Institute who has worked with Egereva at the U.N. “It’s being framed by the Russian government as terrorist activity, but it’s activity that Indigenous women do every day for the U.N. system these days.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline UN officials urge Russia to free Indigenous climate advocate on Jun 10, 2026.

Brazil is rushing to regulate its critical minerals industry and unlock its vast untapped reserves of rare earths, aiming to position itself as a strategic producer with Chinese and US companies competing for fresh supplies.

Despite opposition from some environmental and Indigenous rights groups, lawmakers in Brazil’s lower house of Congress passed the government’s critical minerals policy bill last month, and backers now hope to secure final Senate approval before October’s presidential election.

Already a major mining nation with large reserves of graphite and copper, Brazil has the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earth elements after China, with the difference that Brazilian reserves are largely untapped. This group of 17 minerals is used in permanent magnets for electric motors vital for clean technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines.

As Chinese and US companies compete to secure supplies, Brazil hopes to serve them both.

“We don’t have any preferences. Whoever wishes to participate with us to help with the mining, processing, and production of the wealth that these rare earths can bring is welcome to invest in Brazil,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told journalists after meeting President Donald Trump in Washington in May.

Value-added mining

The draft legislation, which is backed by industry groups, creates a $380-million Guarantee Fund for Mineral Activity meant to provide financial support for mining projects, grants priority status for permitting strategic mining projects, and requires companies to dedicate a share of their revenue for domestic research and development on mineral extraction and processing – part of the policy’s effort to maximise the benefits of mining.

To select strategic projects and support their environmental licensing, the bill envisions establishing a Committee for Strategic and Critical Minerals, which includes representatives from different government agencies, state and local governments, industry and civil society.

Mining Minister Alexandre Silveira said the government’s bill “aligns mineral exploration with national interests”, and he has pledged to work closely with the Senate to pass it in the coming months.

“Brazil … doesn’t intend to be a mere exporter of unprocessed raw materials, but to expand its industrial and technological capacity, too,” Silveira said last month.

The Brazilian government says the country presents an “unparalleled” opportunity for refining “green minerals”, given that around half of its electricity comes from hydropower.

At the other end of the supply chain, several Chinese companies have vast plans to assemble EVs in Brazil. EV manufacturing giant BYD opened a massive production facility in the state of Bahia last October – the company’s largest EV factory outside China. BYD’s top executive in Brazil told Reuters it is aiming to produce and source 50% of its vehicle components in the country by the end of the year. BYD’s subsidiaries in Brazil directly own mineral rights in the country’s “lithium valley”.

Brazil’s Congress defies Lula to push through “devastation bill” on COP30’s heels

Some pro-government lawmakers had proposed the creation of a state-owned agency that would hold a monopoly over mining projects, but that was eventually rejected after the federal government decided that no additional state intervention was needed in the sector.

Mônica Sodré, CEO of the think tank Meridiana and senior fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), said the country’s mining rules were created when minerals were mainly seen as “commodities for export”. Today, they are “central to economic security, industrial policy and geopolitics,” she said.

The proposed legislation, she added, is “an important first step, not a final solution” to position the country as a major mineral producer, and developing projects will require continued efforts through the newly-created committee.

Soft on safeguards?

But despite the government’s pledges to develop a critical minerals sector that benefits the national interest, some environmental groups have opposed the critical minerals policy bill, saying it does not create enough safeguards for the protection of affected communities.

Adriana Pinheiro, public policy advisor with Observatório do Clima, a network representing 130 environmental nonprofits, told Climate Home News that the bill “lacks explicit provisions on free, prior and informed consultation”.

• Jul 17, 2025 News In Brazil’s lithium belt, locals fear push to dismantle legal protections As demand for transition minerals soars, pro-business lawmakers and environmental activists in COP30 host Brazil are in a tug of war over how to regulate the mining industry Read more
• Jun 5, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier The scramble to stockpile critical minerals could drive up energy transition costs Researchers warn that uncoordinated stockpiling could push up prices of minerals needed for clean energy technologies and delay their roll out Read more
• May 27, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Recycling could meet half of Europe’s critical mineral needs by 2050 A new report by an EU-funded research project says the bloc could harness its “urban mines” to reduce its dependence on China for energy transition minerals Read more

The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib) said in a note to Congress that the bill has the “potential to significantly impact indigenous territories without adequately incorporating mechanisms for protection and participation”.

Sodré said the concerns are valid, but that the draft bill is not the place to address them. Instead, she said, indigenous rights and participation should be considered on a project-by-project basis and that safeguards exist under Brazil’s “extensive” environmental permitting legislation.

“Precaution is essential in mining policy, but it should not lead to inaction. Blocking investments or delaying projects without clear evidence of unacceptable risks can result in significant social and economic costs,” she said.

Pinheiro, of the Observatório do Clima, added that while the bill encourages domestic processing of critical minerals, it does not create mandatory quotas. Countries such as Indonesia and Zimbabwe have banned raw exports, forcing investors to set up processing plants in the country.

“This regulation is only positive if it combines industrial strategy with strong safeguards,” Pinheiro said.

Geological advantage

China extracts about 70% of the world’s rare earths and controls around 90% of the processing – creating a potential chokepoint that has alarmed Western countries at a time of heightened geopolitical tension. The US and China have opted to stockpile key minerals in case trade restrictions are enacted against them. 

Brazil, which has strong trade and diplomatic ties with both Beijing and Washington, views the intensifying competition for rare earth supplies as an opportunity for it to develop a new mining sector. Brazil’s National Mining Agency has reported about 2,700 rare earths projects under consideration, according to local news outlet Folha de Sao Paulo.

The country’s rare earths reserves also have a geological advantage, as they are predominantly contained in ionic clay rather than hard rock. These deposits contain sought-after “heavy rare earths” and require less processing to extract.

Workers of Sigma Lithium Corp SGML.V are seen at the Grota do Cirilo mine in Itinga, in Minas Gerais state, Brazil April 18, 2023. REUTERS/Washington Alves Workers of Sigma Lithium Corp SGML.V are seen at the Grota do Cirilo mine in Itinga, in Minas Gerais state, Brazil April 18, 2023. REUTERS/Washington Alves

Backed by $2.7 billion in financial support from US government agencies, American mining firm USA Rare Earths acquired Brazil’s Serra Verde group, which owns the high-grade Pela Ema mine. The ionic clay mine is the only one outside Asia capable of supplying all the four major rare earths at scale, according to the company’s CEO Barbara Humpton.

Other major firms have followed, with Canada’s Aclara conducting studies in the $680-million Carina mine and Australian companies Meteoric and Viridis also seeking to develop ionic clay mines for European and American buyers.

Despite growing Western investments, China remains Brazil’s largest trade partner and the country’s imports from Brazil have already tripled between 2024 and 2025, according to data by the Brazil-China Business Council.

The draft bill does not guarantee that Brazil will be able to compete with Chinese rare earths on the international market, Sodré noted. A “more realistic benchmark” is how effectively the country can position itself as major supplier of critical minerals for the energy transition, she added.

Pinheiro said clearer regulation may help shape investments into the country, but foreign companies will not necessarily wait for Brazil’s critical minerals policy.

“The central question is whether Brazil will use this moment to build domestic value chains, ensure socio-environmental safeguards and protect affected communities,” she said.

This article was edited to correct Mônica Sodré’s job title

The post Brazil jostles for rare earths share as US-China rivalry heats up appeared first on Climate Home News.

While coffee chains across North America generate mountains of disposable cups and lids every day, Italy's traditional café culture offers a different model. By serving coffee in reusable cups and encouraging customers to stay rather than rush away, Italian bars show that convenience and sustainability do not have to be at odds.

For more than a decade, Sue “Seabird Sue” Schubel’s lifelike decoys have anchored a global seabird restoration effort built on “social attraction,” luring colony-nesting birds back to lost or safer habitats, a strategy that has aided about a third of the world’s seabird species, including some of the most endangered.

Resilient, self-reliant food systems. A new IPES-Food report says they’re key to addressing food price volatility amid rising geopolitical tensions.

CALGARY — A new report Demand as a Utility Resource from the Pembina Institute finds that demand-side management (DSM) programs are widely used across electricity systems to reduce peak demand and manage overall system costs by influencing...

Former US science envoy calls out Australia's push for gas, but is amazed that renewables have succeeded at all, given the wall of money arrayed against it.

The post “We’re afraid to make that transition:” Ex-Biden official goes toe-to-toe with big Australian gas players appeared first on Renew Economy.

Solar energy just provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record — marking a milestone for the rise of renewables in America. 

While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8 percent of the nation’s electrons in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2 percent. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20 percent. 

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the U.S. electricity system,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember, in a press release. “From Texas to California, markets across the U.S. are betting on solar to meet rising power needs.”

The turnaround comes even as political headwinds have shifted against renewable energy. 

Last summer, Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which rolled back enormous swaths of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. And President Donald Trump has actively sought to hinder renewable energy development, even offering to pay at least one oil company $1 billion to stop building its offshore wind projects. 

The latest electricity data comes the same month that the Trump administration announced $700 million in funding for investments in the coal industry. It included money for what would be the country’s first new coal-fired power plants in 13 years — sourced from funds previously dedicated to reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, not deepening it. 

“Today we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” said Trump, who campaigned on the coal-friendly slogan ‘dig, baby, dig.” 

Ember’s analysis found that coal generation in May was actually up slightly from April, when it hit an all-time low. Its share of the grid will also likely tick up in the summer, as cooling needs peak. But the steady downward trend over the last several years suggests that even all the president’s men might not be able to put the coal industry back together again. 

“Spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental group Evergreen Action, told the Associated Press. Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association disagreed, telling the AP that coal generation helps shield consumers from the impacts of volatile energy prices and supply challenges exacerbated by AI.

Regardless of what coal does, experts believe the solar market will continue its upward march. While installations dropped in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association, it still accounted for more than half of all newly installed electricity capacity. Even MAGA influencers are promoting it. 

“We’re going to just keep seeing more and more renewables brought onto the grid,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy at the Sierra Club. “That’s good for people’s wallets, it’s good for their health, it’s good for the planet.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline For first time, Americans are getting more of their electricity from solar than coal on Jun 10, 2026.

Mayor Mamdani’s executive budget added $95.9 million in new money to build out pedestrian and bike greenways over the next five years — an infusion welcomed by advocates who nevertheless cautioned that the funds are not enough to fulfill New York’s growing need for car-free paths.

The city routinely takes more than a decade to roll out new greenways, which serve both as recreational spaces and key transportation corridors. When those greenways finally open, however, the city often allows them to slowly deteriorate by delaying or entirely foregoing basic maintenance, such as fixing sinkholes and repairing cracks.

“Projects that were funded many, many years ago, it takes such a long time to actually implement them,” said Hunter Armstrong, executive director of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. “We just cut the ribbon on a project a couple of weeks ago that was years in the works,” he added, referring to a project on Sunset Park’s waterfront.

Significantly, the new money for the Department of Transportation will pay for capital construction of greenways, which refers to projects that involve hardened infrastructure — not the usual paint and flimsy plastic bollards. The transportation-focused mayor also gave the agency some $200 million over the next four years to quickly build out bus and bike lanes and public realm upgrades as part of the Streets Master Plan.

Cycle of disrepair

Past mayors treated greenways as an afterthought and let crumbling sections languish, from the country’s first bicycle path on Ocean Parkway to the nation’s busiest one on the Hudson River Greenway.

This cycle of disrepair forces city leaders to spend costly political capital to fund overdue renovations, whose costs rise as conditions worsen over time. During those renovations, the Parks Department and DOT have repeatedly refused to repurpose excess car lanes for safe passage, and instead directed cyclists onto unsafe detours for months on end. New sections of greenway still require years to install.

For example, the city recently wrapped up a stretch of two-way bike paths along one mile of Brooklyn’s Third Avenue that took 14 years to finish – as long as it took to construct the Brooklyn Bridge in the 19th century. Another proposal has already broken that record: a two-way raised bike path on three blocks of Commercial Street in Greenpoint will finally break ground sometime in 2028 – 16 years after city officials identified the route for upgrades in 2012.

These projects, like a $217-million esplanade stretching for eight blocks along the East Midtown waterfront, carry sky-high price tags. “Unfortunately the cost of these projects does add up, so ideally there will be ways to efficiently and wisely spend this money,” said Armstrong.

The greenway bucks come as a $7.25 million federal grant for greenways is set to run out next year. Under Mayor Eric Adams, the city spent that grant on planning new routes across the five boroughs but never provided a timeline or funding for the proposals, which included paths along the Bronx’s Harlem River and the western Queens waterfront.

Federal grant money yielded this plan in 2023. to add 40 miles of greenways.

DOT said the new cash will help turn those proposals into reality. “This historic investment gives NYC DOT the largest budget in its history, including the biggest-ever funding pool for bus and bike projects,” agency spokesperson Vin Barone told Streetsblog. “That means more staff and additional capacity to deliver for all New Yorkers for years to come.”

Mamdani’s executive budget labels the new funds as “Bike Network Development 2030.” The money is dedicated to greenways now, but City Hall spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said the mayor could repurpose it for non-greenway bike lanes that are more immediately, pressing.

Still, the funding amounts to a small drop in the city’s $124.7 billion annual fiscal spending plan. The NYPD, by contrast, plans to spend nearly the same amount on overtime this summer alone, as Commissioner Jessica Tisch deploy cops on 12-hour shifts to patrol events like the upcoming FIFA World Cup and the celebrations around the United States’s 250th anniversary.

Capital woes

The Parks Department controls the majority of greenways and has its own $674-million pot of money for some longstanding greenway-related projects and spanning to mid-2034, according to agency rep Chris Clark.

But the agency does not have the staff and resources to realize its projects at a faster pace, according to the city’s greenspace advocates. Amid continuous budget cuts recent years, the agency hemorrhaged dozens of project managers, landscape architects and engineers.

“[These are] the very people who would be facilitating, if not spearheading, the capital projects that people want to see happen,” said Adam Ganser, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. “The agency has been somewhat notorious in their ability to do capital projects, but it’s hardly their fault when they don’t have the staffing to do them.”

For example, the East River Esplanade alone has a $358.4 million budget for its renovation, but it has been crumbling into the water for years. “The funding has been there for a long time, but the project just continues to languish with no leadership or urgency,” Ganser said. “They’re in a tough spot because they don’t have the resources to push forward the literally hundreds of millions of dollars that have been advocated.”

Like other city agencies that perform capital work, Parks must submit new projects to an extensive design, procurement and construction process. This inevitably requires Parks to correspond and collaborate with other entities — such as DOT, ConEd and National Grid — whose infrastructural assets overlap with their own.

But most bureaucratic friction actually arises in the intermediate stage where Parks solicits and chooses third-party contractors to construct projects. This stage is layered with city and state regulations, whose architects originally designed them to prevent city leaders from corruptly favoring their cronies. In practice, these rules slow down routine work, a former senior Parks official argued.

“Procurement sucks. So much of it is out of the agency’s hands. It’s really hard to reform procurement on a simple agency level,” said Sam Biederman, who was the agency’s chief of staff during the late de Blasio administration and now runs a communications consultancy. “I get the point of not wanting this thing to be corrupt – I’m from Chicago – but the effect of all these decades and decades of laws … is to catastrophically slow down the procurement process.”

Former Mayor Eric Adams convened a task force to improve the capital process, and the new administration should look into reforms, and fund planning staff at Parks to be able to advance projects, according to Ganser.

“It is fixable and it would require both that the agency just decide that this is going to be their top priority… and then having the mayor and the administration focus on the procurement and capital process citywide,” he said.

Parks’s greenway repairs heavily rely on the goodwill of local elected officials to allocate their own discretionary funds for projects. In 2019, the agency finally began renovating a mile of the historic Ocean Parkway malls. That project cost more than $4 million over five years, after officials secured funds from then-Council Member Mark Treyger and Eric Adams, who was still Brooklyn’s borough president at the time.

The agency lacks the budget to maintain its vast portfolio of greenways, playgrounds, pools, boardwalks and miscellaneous greenery in a state of good repair, so officials have relied on lengthy and expensive capital projects rather than routine maintenance.

“Because the agency doesn’t have the money to maintain, it almost becomes part of a strategy,” Ganser said. “The only way they get these things repaired is if they become capital projects. It’s the most expensive way to do this. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The circumferential loops of Central Park and Prospect Park offer two vivid counterexamples. These drives are relatively well-maintained because they fall under the jurisdiction of DOT and its robust road resurfacing program — a legacy of those paths allowing car traffic until 2018, when former mayor Bill de Blasio banned motor vehicles from both.

Consequently, advocates have repeatedly urged the city to reassign greenway maintenance to DOT. Conversely, some advocates have argued for Parks to take over trimming greenery along DOT’s greenways, a task with which the latter agency has struggled.

The missing one percent

On the campaign trail, Mamdani vowed to increase Parks’s budget to one percent of the city’s overall spending plan, but he has allocated only around 0.55 percent, or $685.4 million, in his annual budget.

“I am going to take the mayor at his word that he is going to get to one percent in his first term,” said Ganser. “It’s a difficult budget year. At the same time, the Parks Department budget is a tiny fraction over the overall city budget, so there’s no reason we can’t make significant progress.”

The city should select a few projects to show how they can speed up implementation, said Jon Orcutt, a safe streets advocate and former DOT policy director under the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations. “Pick a couple of projects already in the pipeline… and try to make them models for speeding them up,” he said.

The city should finally link three existing greenways in southern Brooklyn, Ocean Parkway, Shore Parkway, and the Jamaica Bay Greenway, by installing a bikeway on overly-wide Neptune Avenue and the Cropsey Avenue bridge.

How about filling in this gap in southern Brooklyn’s greenway network?

“Let’s use some of the Mamdani political capital honeymoon period to finally connect these three routes that have sat there with this big gap in the middle since the time of Robert Moses,” Orcutt said.

• One reason why American roads are so deadly is that we let habitually bad drivers keep driving no matter how many wrecks they cause. (Everyone Is Welcome)
• One way to keep such drivers off the road is passive drunk driving detection technology that, if it detects alcohol on the driver’s breath, won’t let them start the car. A provision in the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill required all new cars to have it within five years. But now Congress might block its implementation. (Love of Place)
• A new Federal Transit Administration dashboard will measure how “family friendly” transit systems are. (Metro)
• Crowdsourcing can help cities find broken sidewalks and fix them. (Next City)
• An NYU study found that bike lanes increase bikeshare ridership, especially among riders over 60. (Planetizen)
• Beloved Chicago bike planner Riley O’Neil was killed by a truck driver while riding his bike when he swerved out of an unprotected bike lane to avoid being doored. (Tribune, Streetsblog Chicago)
• Austin businesses are preparing to relocate to make way for light rail construction (KVUE). But the project still faces financial headwinds even after it was cut back from 20 miles to 10 (Free Press).
• High-speed rail would generate billions of dollars in property tax revenue for Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas. (KERA)
• Portland transit agency TriMet could be entering a doom loop. (Willamette Week)
• Jersey City is doing 100 quick-build traffic safety projects, while Hoboken is creating 25 all-way stops (NJ.com). Famous for going nine years without a traffic death, Hoboken did it in part simply by using cheap plastic bollards to daylight intersections (Carscoops).
• Kansas City is beefing up transit service for the World Cup. (KCTV)
• Celebrities are popularizing bike dates in New York City. (Times)
• Yes, it is possible to move an entire apartment’s worth of furniture by bike. (streets.mn)
• Dentures, wedding gowns and an ankle bracelet are among the strangest things people left in an Uber over the past year. (Mashable)

Demand-side management (DSM) programs are widely used across electricity systems to reduce peak demand and manage overall system costs by influencing electricity consumption. As electricity demand grows and grids evolve, many jurisdictions are...

The Lock the Gate Alliance is calling on the NSW Government to act urgently on coal, after a new report from the NSW Net Zero Commission revealed that climate change could lead to 290,000 fewer jobs in NSW by 2070.

Australia's huge and growing fleet of home batteries are delivering "enormous benefits" to grid, even without being connected to VPPs, AEMO chief says.

The post Passive home batteries deliver “enormous benefits” to the grid, says AEMO – even if not orchestrated in VPPs appeared first on Renew Economy.

Malaysia infrastructure giant buys into one of the biggest solar and battery hybrids in Australia, with a view to making it even bigger to accommodate data centres.

The post Malaysia giant buys solar and battery project in coal country, with eye on data centres appeared first on Renew Economy.

Oil companies said project would capture 68 megatonnes of CO2 a year. Now that number has dropped to 16.

Source

Batteries – big, small and in-between – are "fundamentally changing" the electricity system – while also changing the outlook for AEMO's grid blueprint.

The post Big and small batteries “fundamentally changing” the grid, and its planning blueprint, says AEMO boss appeared first on Renew Economy.

Registered nurses and caregivers at Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding, Calif., will hold a strike vote and picket on Thursday, June 11, to protest management’s refusal to address patient care and safe staffing issues. Nurses and health care workers at Shasta Regional, a Prime Healthcare facility.

The world’s first undersea data centre has begun operating off the coast from Shanghai, powered by offshore wind and using seawater for cooling.

The post China opens world’s first undersea data centre, powered by offshore wind turbines appeared first on Renew Economy.