Your Weekly Dose of Climate Hope: July 12, 2026
Neil Cutler
Our Sunday feature shares good news on climate action & resilience!Clean EnergyThe largest-yet floating solar project in Africa has now come online at the Oued Rmel Dam reservoir high in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco! Its 13 MW of clean power will help supply the Tanger Med industrial port complex. That port is known as a major hub for Moroccan-made Chinese EV company exports to Europe, with factories linked to the port by Al-Boraq, Africa’s first high-speed rail line. Relatedly, the World Bank has approved funding for a new 300 MW/1,500 MWh pumped hydro “water battery” to be built as storage support for at least 1 gigawatt of new solar and wind in Morocco. Integrated electrotech economies are taking shape worldwide!
New Jersey has passed a balcony solar bill with UNANIMOUS support in the state legislature, becoming the 10th U.S. state to advance such a bill through both houses!
Baker Hughes, in Texas, is one of the world’s largest oil field services companies. They’re a primary seller of drilling equipment to giants like Exxon and Chevron. Now, they’ve signed a major new deal with newly formed geothermal company Mantle Reach Power to supply rigs for 500 MW of new 24/7 clean geothermal electricity in the next 5 years — in addition to their 300 MW 2025 deal with pioneer startup Fervo! A fossil industry supplier pivoting fast to survive in an accelerating electrotech future.
The newly elected post-revolution government of Bangladesh has enacted sweeping new electrification incentives! Bangladesh has waived all tariffs on importing electric vehicles and EV charging stations from July 1, 2026 through June 2030, announced a 0% tax rate on the solar power sector until 2035, and furthermore raised taxes on fossil fuel vehicles. In the wake of the Hormuz fossil fuel crisis, electrification is clearly the smart geostrategic choice. And air pollution from constant traffic in the mega-city of Dhaka is notoriously horrific: this should help! Excellent work.
WildlifeWashington State startup Crown Bees is providing native bee restoration as a service, selling mail-order bee houses, wildflower seeds, and live (regionally sourced) mason and leafcutter bees across America! Distinct from European honeybees, these native species are highly efficient pollinators for wildlands or gardens. Their online tool based on iNaturalist citizen science even identifies your local wild bees and how best to help them by planting local flowers! An excellent project for bottom-up rewilding.
Bolivia’s first-ever release of a jaguar into the wild occurred in June 2026! Yaguara, orphaned as a cub by wildfires in 2024 and raised by a sanctuary, was released into the Noel Kempff Mercado national park after honing her instincts in a semi-wild forest enclosure. The politically tumultuous Andean-Amazonian nation has the world’s highest level of jaguar poaching, and the up-front investment in this enclosure should provide a platform for future rescued jaguars to return to the wild. Excellent work!
Commercial fishing was completely banned in the Yangtze River in 2021 (an unprecedentedly large-scale measure that involved resettling 231,000 fisherfolk) after decades of ecosystem devastation. Five years later, a riverine renaissance is rising, with a 2026 study (PDF here) finding that fish biomass has increased by 209% in the Yangtze from 2018 to 2023! The Yangtze sturgeon, declared extinct in the wild in 2022, has been seen spawning in the Yangtze once again after a massive captive breeding and reintroduction program. Extraordinary scale, speed, and effect!
Located on the edge of the war-torn Sahel, Pendjari National Park in northern Benin (managed by leading conservation NGO African Parks) is one of the last strongholds for the imperiled West African population of leopards (Panthera pardus). Now, a new study analyzing six years of camera trap data from 2017 to 2023 has found a meaningful increase in leopard density, from 0.62 to 2.08 leopards per 100 square kilometers, suggesting that the park population is increasing. An encouraging sign!
In waters right off the docks of downtown Miami, Florida, an urban proto-reef has formed, made up of astonishingly resilient “super coral” strains of brain, staghorn, and elkhorn coral that have shrugged off generally-lethal levels of acidic waters, heatwaves, and diseases. (There’s even a live Coral City Camera)! Researchers suspect it could be thanks to their heat-resistant “Ventura strain” of Durusdinium trenchii symbiotic algae, which is normally found in Pacific corals but may have ended up in Miami via hobbyist aquariums. Fascinating ultra-fast adaptation to the Anthropocene!
A landmark new study analyzing nine years of camera trap data has found that when pumas started visiting the tiny Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve of Bay Area California, it transformed the suburban forest patch’s entire food web. Coyotes and deer reduced their nighttime activity, gray foxes and brush rabbits became more active, and woody plant density (including everything from sagebrush to a native oak species) multiplied 64-fold in 17 years as deer browsing declined. Rewilding: powerful!
InnovationThe solar-powered Interceptor waste-eating robot boat model from The Ocean Cleanup is increasingly successful around the world, with 21 now operating in river mouths across 10 countries. An early Interceptor deployment in Bellona Creek, the outflow for the Los Angeles County urban drainage network, caught 143,710 pounds of trash in 2025 before it could enter the ocean. Awesome work!
A recent trial in the Neuchâtel canton of Switzerland has produced world-first positive results for deploying solar panels in the unused space between the rails of train tracks. More than 11,000 trains have safely passed over the removable panels, and the airflow of the passage neatly removes dust and debris. French, Italian, and Korean railways are reportedly already interested in these new Swiss results. Great!
Electric trucks are fast becoming commonplace in China, with cutting-edge sodium-ion batteries successfully tested in eighteen-wheelers and networks of ultra-fast battery-swap stations proliferating on major inter-city routes. Electric trucks made up one-third of all heavy truck sales in China in 2025, and the Ministry of Transport now targets 40% of China’s new heavy-truck sales and 20% of the nationwide heavy-truck fleet being electric by 2030! Decarbonization keeps happening faster and faster. Your Dose of Climate Hope is written by Sam Matey-Coste for Climate Action Now. Do You Value Our Work?If you value our work, please help us continue it:
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