It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 05, 2026
Vietnam’s Gia Lai draws wave of renewable energy investment as wind projects expand
Vietnam’s central province of Gia Lai is emerging as a renewable energy investment hub, with several large-scale wind power projects secured in the first months of 2026, VnEconomy reports.
Officials said the province is benefiting from strong wind conditions, abundant land resources and a policy focus on green growth. It has become one of the country’s key destinations for renewable energy development, supported by Vietnam’s revised National Power Development Plan VIII.
In late May, provincial authorities approved a consortium of ANI Power, Song Da 505 and Trang Duc Solar Power as the investor for the Chu Pong wind power project in Bo Ngoong commune. The project has total investment of more than VND1.6 trillion ($61mn). Construction is expected to start in December 2026, with operations targeted for early 2028.
In April, another consortium was selected to develop the 42-MW Nhon Hoa 4 wind power plant, with investment estimated at VND1.68 trillion.
Separately, VinEnergo, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s Vingroup, was named investor in the Hon Trau phase 1 and Vinh Thuan wind power projects. The combined investment exceeds VND53 trillion.
By the end of 2025, Gia Lai had 87 renewable energy and hydropower projects in operation. This includes 17 wind farms with total capacity of 916 MW, reinforcing its position as a leading renewable energy centre in Vietnam.
A new study led by Professor Mark Trimmer of Queen Mary University of London, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, explains how increases in natural methane emissions will be maximised under future climate warming.
Say ‘methane’ and most people think of cows, yet nearly half of all methane is produced by microbes in the natural world, especially lakes, ponds and wet soils. How much methane reaches our atmosphere depends on a balance between the production of methane by one type of microbe and the consumption of methane by another type. We know in a simple sense that these methane related microbes are stimulated by warming, but how both types will respond to warming over the next century is unknown.
The scientists used a unique natural experiment spanning the northern hemisphere to test the effect of warming on the methane balance over centuries to millennial time scales that is, after plenty of time for the microbes to adjust to climate change. They used samples collected from naturally warmed streams in remote parts of Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard and Kamchatka (Russia). They showed that while methane consuming microbes do work harder under warmer conditions, they cannot fully check the extra methane being produced with warming. Worryingly this new study thus describes a seemingly inevitable increase in methane emissions as Earth continues to warm, building a positive feedback loop through climate change and still higher temperatures.
Scientist Dr Sarah Faye Harpenslager (now of B-Ware Research Centre and Radboud University) who led the field work to remote sites near the Arctic said “Doing fieldwork in these remote settings was both a unique and challenging experience. Luckily, we had a great multidisciplinary team of scientists, working together to collect samples and perform measurements under difficult conditions.”
And Professor Gabriel Yvon-Durocher of the University of Exeter said “What is remarkable is that despite the complexity of microbial processes involved in the emission of methane from natural ecosystems, we find the same strong temperature sensitivity among the diversity of geothermally heated freshwaters across the Arctic region”.
This methane research formed part of a wider project led by Professor Guy Woodward of Imperial College and Professor Alex Dumbrell of the University of Essex who said: “We have now shown how the combined effects of warming has contrasting effects on microbes that produce methane versus those that consume it - this new insight required a uniquely ambitious genes-to-ecosystems field campaign, which spanned intercontinental scales”.
With a key revision of the European Union's Emissions Trading System due on 15 July, an open letter pleads with legislators to consider how carbon emissions should be calculated and managed internationally.
An aviation industry alliance has urged the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to back down from plans to expand the European Union's carbon market to international flights, citing likely trade disruptions.
In an open letter made public on Friday, European aviation leaders argue that a revision of the bloc's Emissions Trading System (ETS) is slated for mid-July could trigger an aggressive trade war and cripple continental airlines.
The plea is signed by top executives from Airlines for Europe, the Airports Council International Europe, the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe, CANSO Europe and the European Regions Airline Association.
At stake is a long-standing "stop the clock" mechanism, which has exempted extra-European flights from paying carbon costs linked to their emissions for over a decade and is legally set to expire at the end of 2026.
Although the ETS technically targets all domestic and international flights, the "stop the clock" rule means airlines do not have to surrender carbon certificates for long-haul flights entering or leaving the European Economic Area (EEA).
The exemption was designed to give the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency, breathing room to roll out its own global market mechanism, which is considered less ambitious than the ETS – and if the exemption is allowed to lapse, the EU's carbon system will automatically expand to cover long-haul flights.
The open letter's signatories describe this as unilateral regulatory overreach, and warn that it could spark severe global retaliation. They point to the chaos of 2012, when a similar expansion attempt provoked a fierce international backlash.
During that dispute, the US Congress legally banned American carriers from participating, while other international powers threatened to freeze billions of euros in European aerospace contracts.
"In the current geopolitical context, extending the EU ETS beyond intra-EEA flights will likely provoke an even stronger international backlash than in 2012," the coalition writes.
EU costs versus global costs
Flights departing the EU for destinations outside the EEA are mostly exempt from the EU ETS. Instead, they fall under the United Nations' carbon offsetting rules, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).
According to the campaign group Transport & Environment, 68 percent of emissions from European departing flights in 2025 went unpriced, which they see as a "consequence of the carbon market’s scope limitation to intra-European routes, leaving the most polluting long-haul routes entirely exempt."
But the airline alliance argues that targeting long-haul flights unilaterally will simply divert traffic to non-European hub airports, delivering absolutely "no net climate benefit" while punishing homegrown carriers.
"The appropriate solution is a strengthened CORSIA as the single global carbon pricing framework for international aviation," the signatories wrote.
According to the global campaign group Aviation Benefits Beyond Borders, CORSIA covers approximately 60 percent of total international aviation carbon dioxide emissions.
If CORSIA fails to align with the Paris Agreement goals or covers less than 70 percent of global aviation emissions, the EU ETS will likely be expanded to include flights departing from the EEA as of January 2027.
The European Commission is due to file a report on the environmental integrity of the CORSIA framework to the European Parliament and the Council by 1 July 2026.
A Commission spokesperson told Euronews that the EU executive hasn't yet submitted it.
June 5, 2026 By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh World Environment Day, observed annually on June 5, should be considered one of the most important international platforms when it comes to raising awareness about the environment and mobilizing collective action.
Azerbaijan will host Friday’s global commemoration of World Environment Day in Baku on the theme “Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future.” This theme highlights the need to confront the climate crisis while charting a sustainable path for humanity on this planet.
World Environment Day 2026 falls amid urgent signals coming from the Earth, which include rising seas, raging wildfires, heat waves and melting glaciers. This needs firm action and millions worldwide will this week participate in events, campaigns, educational initiatives, tree-planting drives, policy forums and community-led projects under the banner “#NowForClimate.”
The scientific consensus, anchored in reports from the World Meteorological Organization, NASA, the Copernicus Climate Change Service and other authoritative bodies, paints an image of accelerating climate disruption.
The years 2015 to 2025 were the 11 warmest on record. Global mean near-surface temperatures in 2025 stood at about 1.43 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline, ranking it as the second or third warmest year since records began.
Projections indicate that the period 2026 to 2030 will see annual global temperatures ranging between 1.3 C and 1.9 C above pre-industrial levels, with a high probability of temporarily exceeding the 1.5 C Paris Agreement threshold in at least one year. Long-term warming trends, compounded by potential El Nino influences, mean that 2026 will likely rank among the warmest years, potentially challenging recent records.
Sea-level rise also continues unabated. The global average sea level has risen between 21 cm and 24 cm since 1880, with acceleration driven by thermal expansion and loss from glaciers and ice sheets. In 2025, levels remained close to the record highs observed in 2024. Low-lying coastal regions and small islands, in particular, face existential threats.
Meanwhile, glacial melt and Arctic amplification are proceeding rapidly. There have been profound changes, with record-low Arctic sea ice in early 2026 and accelerated Greenland and Antarctic ice loss contributing to sea-level dynamics.
Extreme weather events have also intensified. The frequency, severity and duration of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and tropical cyclones have increased markedly.
Climate impacts manifest across regions, disproportionately burdening populations with limited adaptive capacity.
Europe is warming at twice the global average rate. The 2025 European heat waves caused thousands of excess deaths, with estimates ranging from 4,700 to more than 16,000. Wildfires ravaged parts of the Iberian Peninsula, with more than 670,000 hectares burned across Portugal and Spain last year.
North America endured catastrophic events as well. The 2025 Los Angeles wildfires were the costliest on record, destroying thousands of structures, displacing more than 50,000 people and causing damage exceeding $135 billion. Subsequent events include deadly Texas flash floods and widespread severe storms.
In Asia, the 2025 Pakistan floods claimed more than 1,000 lives, while India and East Asia faced extreme heat waves and cyclones. China experienced significant flooding that caused substantial economic losses. Southern and Eastern Asia continue to grapple with the compound risks of monsoonal variability, heat stress and glacial lake outburst flood threats in the Himalayas.
Africa and Latin America witnessed severe droughts interspersed with floods. And Southern Africa and parts of the Amazon faced drought conditions that exacerbated the wildfire threat, while the likes of Nigeria and Mozambique suffered devastating floods. The Amazon basin saw extensive burning throughout 2025, threatening biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks.
Australia and the Pacific endured heat waves and wildfires in early 2026, alongside ongoing threats to coral reefs from marine heat waves and ocean acidification.
These examples are not isolated anomalies, they highlight systematic shifts.
Amid these challenges, one bit of good news is that a profound energy transition is unfolding. In 2025, renewables (solar, wind, hydro and others) surpassed coal in global electricity generation for the first time in the modern era, achieving 33.8 percent of the mix compared to coal’s 33.0 percent. Solar alone met 75 percent of global electricity demand growth.
By the end of 2025, renewables accounted for nearly 49 percent of global installed power capacity. Global energy transition investment reached a record $2.3 trillion in 2025, up 8 percent from the year before and outpacing fossil fuel investments.
Countries like China and India lead in deployment scale, while policy frameworks in the EU and commitments under the Paris Agreement are accelerating the transition. Nevertheless, this progress remains insufficient to align with 1.5 C pathways.
Climate change necessitates a multilateral approach and governance. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, recognizes that wealthier, historically high-emitting nations bear greater obligations. These countries must provide financial, technological and capacity-building support to the vulnerable nations that are least responsible for the crisis yet are most severely impacted.
In other words, wealthier economies, having accrued prosperity through carbon-intensive development, possess both the moral imperative and material capacity to lead. Support for small island states, agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and forest conservation in the tropics is critical and could even be viewed as in their own best interest because we have a shared planetary system.
In a nutshell, the Earth’s warnings amid the climate crisis keep growing louder. As we mark World Environment Day, we should remember one key truth: that we share and inhabit one planet. We need cooperative climate action — #NowForClimate.
Examples that highlight the building of biomolecular assemblies with MDNA: extension of DNA structures (left), using proteins as scaffold to generate DNA structure (centre), and connecting two DNA strands to form a DNA loop (right). (Molecular representations visualized with Mol* Viewer). Image: HIMS.
Computational chemists at the University of Amsterdam’s Van ’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences have developed a comprehensive software suite to create accurate models of DNA in biomolecular assemblies. Called MDNA, the user-friendly molecular modelling toolkit helps biochemists, molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, and biophysicists to visualise and analyse DNA structures and perform accurate simulations.
The development of the MDNA suite, led by associate professor Jocelyne Vreede, has just been presented in in a paper in Nucleic Acids Research. The software is open-source and publicly available through Figshare and Github. It is easily accessible, providing inspiration to any scientist with an interest in DNA. It has been thoroughly tested by students in mathematics, chemistry and biology, some of whom had hardly any programming experience.
Structure generation
MDNA supports molecular simulations by providing atomic resolution structural modelling of double-stranded DNA in diverse shapes and compositions, including DNA-protein assemblies. By facilitating precise structural modelling of DNA at atomic resolution, MDNA contributes to improving the understanding of DNA dynamics and interactions in complex biological systems.
With MDNA, users can easily generate coordinates for the atoms in double-stranded DNA. It represents each base pair as a rigid body, according to the rigid base formalism of the Curves+ code, already a popular tool for analysis and visualisation of three-dimensional nucleic acid conformations. MDNA allows to create DNA coordinates in many different forms on any arbitrary curve in three-dimensional space. Users can create DNA strands or modify and extend existing structures. It comes with a library of sixteen bases that will be expanded in the future.
The Amsterdam researchers collaborated with the group of Helmut Schiessel at TU Dresden (Germany), implementing an energy function to equilibrate the generated structures and ensure that physical properties of DNA, such as stiffness and mobility, are modelled correctly. This does not need to explicitly include all atoms, which enables rapid equilibration within seconds. The energy function also includes constraints that can introduce supercoiling into the DNA.
A single workflow
In addition to generating structures, the software library offers the ability to analyse existing DNA structures, for example from MD simulations. By integrating structure generation and analysis into a single workflow, MDNA facilitates the study of DNA-protein interactions, supporting new insights into DNA dynamics and molecular simulations. To support users at various levels of molecular modelling, MDNA is complemented by tutorials and demos. These resources improve accessibility for novice and experienced users, providing a starting point for educational applications such as workshops or classroom demonstrations.
Researchers at Henan Normal University have developed a new metal-organic framework (MOF) capable of harvesting water directly from the air in extremely dry environments, offering a potential solution for regions facing severe water scarcity.
The study, published in Green Chemical Engineering, focuses on gallate-based MOFs made from low-cost materials including magnesium, cobalt, and nickel. Among them, the magnesium-based material, Mg-gallate, showed the strongest performance, capturing 170 mg of water per gram at just 0.2% relative humidity (RH), one of the highest water uptake capacities reported for porous materials under such ultra-low humidity conditions.
Atmospheric water harvesting is being explored as a sustainable solution to the growing global water crisis, particularly in arid regions where traditional adsorbent materials struggle to function efficiently. Current technologies often lose effectiveness in environments with very low moisture levels, such as deserts.
The researchers found that Mg-gallate combines strong water adsorption capacity with excellent stability. The material remained structurally stable after 28 days in water and maintained strong performance after 20 adsorption-desorption cycles. It also demonstrated high selectivity for water molecules over nitrogen, making it suitable for extracting water directly from air.
In particular, the material's performance is driven by hydrogen-bonding interactions between water molecules and oxygen-containing groups inside the MOF structure, alongside ultramicroporous channel filling effects. The MOF was successfully produced on a gram scale using inexpensive raw materials and standard laboratory methods, highlighting its potential for future large-scale production.
The researchers believe the technology could support atmospheric water harvesting in deserts and other ultra-dry environments, while also offering potential applications in semiconductor dehumidification, electronics protection, natural gas dehydration, and even space-based water recovery systems.
"Water scarcity is one of the most pressing survival challenges facing humanity in the coming decades. What makes Mg-gallate particularly exciting is that it works precisely where other materials give up: at the edge of detectability for humidity," says corresponding author Jianji Wang. "We are not just improving on existing benchmarks by a small margin; at 0.2% relative humidity, this material is operating in territory that was essentially inaccessible before. And because we can synthesise it in gram quantities from inexpensive, commercially available starting materials, there is a genuine path from the laboratory to real-world deployment."
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Contact the author: Jianji Wang, Henan Normal University, jwang@htu.edu.cn
The publisher KeAiwas established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
(L-R) The NTU Singapore research team behind the depolymerisation-induced polymer separation (DIPS) process include Dr Liang Yen Nan, Senior Research Fellow, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI); Kathirvel Periasamy, PhD student; and Professor Hu Xiao, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Programme Director for Sustainable Chemistry and Materials, NEWRI.
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a new method to recycle mixed plastic packaging without using harmful chemical solvents – an approach that could make one of the world's most difficult waste streams significantly easier to handle.
The research team from NTU Singapore's School of Materials Science and Engineering and Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI) has introduced a process called depolymerisation-induced polymer separation, or DIPS. The method selectively breaks down one type of plastic in mixed plastic packaging while leaving the other plastics intact, allowing each material to be recovered and reused.
Addressing a global recycling challenge
Mixed plastic packaging, commonly used to wrap snacks, instant noodles and other food products, is designed to be tough and airtight. The packaging is made up of several different plastics bonded tightly together, making it challenging to recycle. Even if recycled, the material is often of low quality and has little commercial value.
As a result, most multilayer packaging ends up in landfills or incinerators, adding to a fast-growing waste burden. Global plastic production is projected to reach 736 million tonnes [1] by 2040.
Lead investigator Professor Hu Xiao, who is also the Programme Director for Sustainable Chemistry and Materials at NEWRI, said: “We’re seeing more mixed plastic packaging used in everyday food products, but recycling it safely and efficiently is still a major challenge. Our team set out to tackle this by developing a practical, scalable way to separate these materials without using harmful solvents."
Study co-author Dr Liang Yen Nan, who is also Senior Research Fellow, NEWRI, said: “One of the biggest hurdles in plastic recycling today is the lack of a viable way to deal with mixed plastics. This project was driven by that challenge, and our goal is to help move the industry closer to a solution that works in the real world.”
A solvent-free, continuous process
The DIPS method uses a technique called reactive extrusion, a solvent-free, continuous industrial process in which an extruder machine – a device commonly used in manufacturing to melt and shape plastics – doubles as a chemical reactor.
During processing of mixed plastic packaging, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) – the plastic commonly used for drink bottles – reacts with glycerol, a cheap and widely available reagent, and is selectively broken down into smaller molecules. This PET-derived material has a different physical and chemical nature from the original plastic, causing it to naturally separate from polypropylene (PP), another common plastic used in packaging.
The separation happens automatically during processing, driven by differences in the materials' polarity (a feature that determines solubility) and viscosity (a material’s resistance to deformation under force).
The entire process runs at room pressure and without any solvents, making it safer and potentially more cost-effective than conventional chemical recycling approaches.
High-quality recycled materials
In laboratory tests, the recovered PP retained mechanical properties close to those of virgin plastic, achieving up to 90 per cent of its original tensile strength (maximum stress a material can sustain before it breaks) under optimal conditions – meaning the recycled material is strong enough for practical reuse.
Using samples from post-industrial mixed packaging waste, the method successfully separated the plastic components and produced significantly better material quality compared to conventional mechanical recycling approaches.
While the recovered PET cannot be directly reused, it contains chemical groups that make it potentially useful for higher-value applications such as specialty materials to replace epoxy used in wind turbine blades or for conversion into a monomer (building block of a polymer).
The researchers believe the DIPS approach can be extended to other mixed plastic combinations and scaled up using commonly used industrial extrusion equipment.
First author Kathirvel Periasamy, a PhD student and Provost Graduate Awardee under NTU’s flagship Interdisciplinary Graduate Programme, said: “Our process attempts to bridge the gap between laboratory research and industrial application. By simplifying separation and eliminating solvents, we aim to make plastic recycling more economically viable and environmentally sustainable."
If mixed plastic waste were efficiently recycled at scale, it could unlock an economic value estimated at more than US$250 billion annually [2].
As a next step, the research team plans to collaborate with industry partners to validate the approach under scaled-up conditions and welcomes interest from potential collaborators.
During the processing of mixed plastic packaging using the depolymerisation-induced polymer separation (DIPS) method, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polypropylene (PP) are recovered.
