"Icon has spent 18 months developing its artificial intelligence program — named Vitruvius after an ancient Roman architect — which uses a chatbot to converse with would-be homeowners about their dream projects. After the user responds to a series of prompts, Vitruvius offers several versions of a house, complete with exterior and interior renderings and floor plans."
"Smaller farms have historically irrigated using labor-intensive, manually operated systems. The systems could malfunction, flood crops, and operated inefficiently, requiring farmers to regularly go into the fields to check sprinklers and turn them on and off."
"For African countries, the biggest obstacle to building out the solar industry is that the financing tricks used in China, Europe, and the U.S. to clear the way for widespread solar adoption — government subsidies and utility payments to solar-equipped customers — can’t work in places where states, utilities, and households are all chronically strapped for cash. At the same time, supply chain problems and the widespread perception by financial institutions that investments in Africa are high-risk mean that the cost of solar is far higher than in other places — the same solar system costs twice as much in Ghana as in the U.S. Bringing down the cost of capital requires a stronger track record of profitable investments than what the industry has been able to show so far. That means new business models are needed to make solar affordable for a broader base of customers."
"Technological advances in well drilling, modeling and sensor technology are expected to change that: The Energy Department estimates geothermal energy could power the equivalent of more than 65 million U.S. homes by 2050."
"Despite the low marks in the eyes of many environmentalists, the caucus represents an evolution for many Republicans on climate change. The group—one of a growing number of conservative organizations weighing in on climate issues—says it believes that the climate is changing and that the global industrial era is contributing to it."
"In those simulations, the researchers found that reducing the warming effect of contrails by 73% increased fuel costs by just 0.11% and overall costs by 0.08%, when averaged across those tens of thousands of flights. (Only about 14% of the flights needed to be adjusted to avoid forming warming contrails in the simulations.)"
"In the future, we will see plane tickets that are carbon neutral thanks to carbon dioxide removal, and natural gas power plants that have no pollution at all. These are opportunities to be welcomed, rather than solutions to be shunned for the unforgivable sin of not being an environmental activists’ preferred climate solution."
"Neutron uses AI-powered search, trained on all 52 million pages from the NRC's Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) database. Despite ADAMS offering access to millions of publicly available documents for nuclear facilities, the process of addressing NRC requests and obtaining regulatory approvals is currently cumbersome. Cutting search time by orders of magnitude, Neutron identifies and streamlines patterns and processes, leading to renewed growth in the nuclear sector."
"Another reason for miners’ lack of investment is woefully lengthy permit processes, which delay projects and add uncertainty. In America obtaining permits often takes between seven and ten years, with companies required to consult a variety of government agencies and other interested parties. In some countries environmental concerns have led to approvals being withdrawn. The Serbian government revoked the licence of Rio Tinto, another mining behemoth, for a $2.4bn lithium mine after environmental protests broke out in the country in 2022."
"As solar gains momentum, its champions are getting more creative about where to place panels. There are solar arrays on top of big-box stores, solar arrays on yachts and solar farms that float. There are panels small enough to work on a balcony and even small enough to attach to a smartphone. To minimize clearing land, engineers are also working on incorporating the technology into existing infrastructure. From landfills to art installations, here are five unexpected places you can find a solar farm — or at least some strategically placed panels."
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