Norway—home to the world’s highest per capita number of all-electric cars—is also planning to go emission-free in the friendly skies. The Scandinavian country aims to be the first in the world to switch to electric air transport. State-owned Avinor, which operates most of the country’s airports, plans to adopt battery-powered planes in the coming years to help slow...

Airborne mercury pollution from coal-fired power stations in Victoria’s Latrobe valley increased 37% in just 12 months, according to an annual national survey of toxic emissions. The mercury output from Loy Yang B power station alone more than doubled to 831kg in 2016-2017, an increase of 123% over five years. The brown coal burning power station produced more than 640 times the...

Toyota’s R&D department just made a bunch of special deliveries. The Japanese carmaker announced a host of incrementally improved powertrain components for the Toyota New Generation Architecture (TNGA) that Toyota says will reduce its global fleet CO2 emissions by at least 18 percent. The headliner is a new 2.0-liter, four-cylinder, Dynamic Force Engine (DFE) with a 40...

United Airlines has added more fuel efficient aircrafts to its domestic flight schedules, which will begin flying between Houston and five cities beginning in June. The aircraft, Boeing 737 MAX 9, features advanced technology winglets and fuel efficient engines which enable the planes to fly farther on less fuel, United says. The MAX 9 technology also reduces maintenance costs. In...

Tesla has started building a massive rooftop solar array on top of its Gigafactory 1 (GF1) outside Sparks, Nevada. Once finished, the 70-megawatt system will be the largest in the world by far; the current record-holder is the comparatively shrimpy 11.5-megawatt array in India that can power 8,000 homes. Building Tesla has posted satellite images of the GF1 construction site,...

After more than two years of internal debates and discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency, Mercedes-Benz has decided not to put diesels in any of its passenger cars in the U.S. market. The brand’s only diesel offerings will be Sprinter vans. During the Detroit Auto Show, head of R&D for Mercedes Car Group Ola Källenius said diesels only account for 3 percent...

Gov. Brown released an Executive Order Friday providing the details of an initiative to put 5 million electric-drive vehicles (EVs) on the road by 2030, part of a new goal announced last week in his State of the State address. The ambitious and achievable goal would increase the current number of EVs on the road in California by nearly 14-fold by 2030. The EV initiative would:...

The Chinese megacity of Shenzhen has successfully switched 100 percent of its 16,359-vehicle bus fleet to electric vehicles, reaching its goal just six years after it vowed to move away from diesel engines, according to reporting by CleanTechnica and other news outlets. The fleet — which has three times as many buses as New York City — serves a population of 12 million. The switch...