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Ride a bus, take a package with you – how crowdshipping reduces the impacts of millions of deliveries

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Thursday, August 1, 2024

2p2play/ShutterstockWith the rise in e-commerce, 161 billion parcels were delivered worldwide in 2022, doubling in just four years. In Australia, more households are shopping online than ever before. In 2023, 5.6 million households made a monthly online purchase. This implies millions of parcels are being shipped each month. High-emitting diesel vans or trucks undertake almost all last-mile or doorstop parcel deliveries. In cities, these vehicles add to traffic congestion, parking pressures, carbon emissions and air pollution. So how can we reduce the environmental impact of all these deliveries? Using low-emission vehicles, such as electric delivery vans powered by renewable energy sources, can certainly help. However, electric delivery vans and trucks are still uncommon. Their global sales share in 2023 was just under 5%. Increasing the numbers of vehicle chargers powered by renewable energy will also take time. To complement the transition to cleaner vehicles, shorter-term solutions can include optimising the organisation of deliveries, as well as more novel ideas. One of these ideas is crowdshipping. The concept applies crowdsourcing to delivery services. Members of the public elect to deliver parcels in the course of their journeys. In this way, crowdshipping integrates passenger and freight transport to streamline movement in cities. Crowdshipping is a form of crowdsourcing applied to delivery services. How does crowdshipping work? Crowdshipping taps into “the crowd” to fulfil parcel deliveries. Instead of having dedicated couriers, we can match people with parcels bound for destinations close to where they are already headed, with minimal detours. The concept leverages existing transport capacity. “Crowdshippers” are already travelling privately in their own vehicles or by public transport, or even cycling or walking. Through a service-matching platform, such as Roadie or DoorDash, crowdshippers can be paid for taking a parcel along their way. In cities with good public transport and high levels of use, passengers can hand-carry small parcels across the network. Automated parcel lockers installed at stations can serve as mini distribution centres, where passengers pick up and drop off parcels. Automated lockers at stations could serve as mini distribution centres for parcels carried by passengers. Kecko/Flickr, CC BY What are the benefits? We modelled crowdshipping in Singapore. The city has an excellent public transport system used by nearly 60% of commuters. Algorithms were developed to match a selection of parcels to available passengers, considering their origins and destinations. The simulation used real-world datasets on daily parcel deliveries from the Singapore road network and public transport journeys. The simulation showed crowdshipping can have multiple benefits. By outsourcing only 11% of parcel deliveries to crowdshippers riding public buses, an e-commerce carrier will require fewer delivery vehicles. Delivery vehicle distances fall by 20%, with matching cuts in emissions. And even after paying crowdshippers, the carrier will enjoy cost savings. Most passengers polled said they were willing to serve as crowdshippers for a fee. RossHelen/Shutterstock What practical obstacles must be overcome? There are several practical considerations. For a start, would passengers be willing to deliver parcels? A survey of potential crowdshippers had a positive response. Motivated by being able to earn some income while travelling, most passengers polled said they were willing to serve as crowdshippers. They were especially keen if paid one to two times their transport fare. Next, might transporting parcels on public transport cause extra congestion or delay during peak-hour commutes? We should avoid adding more loads on crowded buses or trains. We explored limiting crowdshipping to off-peak hours and found good availability of potential crowdshippers to deliver parcels. Many public transport systems tend to have excess capacity at these times, so making use of this to move parcels is feasible. Finally, there’s a need to assure parcel shippers, carriers and receivers that the service is reliable. The service platform should be designed to develop and maintain accountability and trust among users. The system would have to be able to verify identity and track parcel status. Crowdshipping using public transport would be ideal for cities with good public transport networks and high passenger numbers. Similar to outsourcing to a logistics provider, carriers can explore using people movements to complement their regular deliveries. Cities need new solutions to make urban mobility sustainable. Integrating passenger and freight transport could make city logistics operations more efficient. By carrying out data-driven transport modelling and simulation, we can explore ideas such as crowdshipping, develop trials to test them and bring them closer to realisation. This article draws on research conducted with Dr Meijing Zhang from Singapore University of Technology and Design. Lynette Cheah receives funding from the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. She previously received funding from the Singapore National Research Foundation, Ministry of National Development, Land Transport Authority, Public Transport Council, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), and Daimler Mobility.

The surge in online purchases is increasing parcel delivery traffic and emissions. One solution is to take advantage of the trips people are already making to get parcels to their destinations.

2p2play/Shutterstock

With the rise in e-commerce, 161 billion parcels were delivered worldwide in 2022, doubling in just four years. In Australia, more households are shopping online than ever before. In 2023, 5.6 million households made a monthly online purchase. This implies millions of parcels are being shipped each month.

High-emitting diesel vans or trucks undertake almost all last-mile or doorstop parcel deliveries. In cities, these vehicles add to traffic congestion, parking pressures, carbon emissions and air pollution. So how can we reduce the environmental impact of all these deliveries?

Using low-emission vehicles, such as electric delivery vans powered by renewable energy sources, can certainly help. However, electric delivery vans and trucks are still uncommon. Their global sales share in 2023 was just under 5%. Increasing the numbers of vehicle chargers powered by renewable energy will also take time.

To complement the transition to cleaner vehicles, shorter-term solutions can include optimising the organisation of deliveries, as well as more novel ideas. One of these ideas is crowdshipping.

The concept applies crowdsourcing to delivery services. Members of the public elect to deliver parcels in the course of their journeys. In this way, crowdshipping integrates passenger and freight transport to streamline movement in cities.

Crowdshipping is a form of crowdsourcing applied to delivery services.

How does crowdshipping work?

Crowdshipping taps into “the crowd” to fulfil parcel deliveries. Instead of having dedicated couriers, we can match people with parcels bound for destinations close to where they are already headed, with minimal detours.

The concept leverages existing transport capacity. “Crowdshippers” are already travelling privately in their own vehicles or by public transport, or even cycling or walking. Through a service-matching platform, such as Roadie or DoorDash, crowdshippers can be paid for taking a parcel along their way.

In cities with good public transport and high levels of use, passengers can hand-carry small parcels across the network. Automated parcel lockers installed at stations can serve as mini distribution centres, where passengers pick up and drop off parcels.

A bank of automated lockers at a public transport station
Automated lockers at stations could serve as mini distribution centres for parcels carried by passengers. Kecko/Flickr, CC BY

What are the benefits?

We modelled crowdshipping in Singapore. The city has an excellent public transport system used by nearly 60% of commuters.

Algorithms were developed to match a selection of parcels to available passengers, considering their origins and destinations. The simulation used real-world datasets on daily parcel deliveries from the Singapore road network and public transport journeys.

The simulation showed crowdshipping can have multiple benefits. By outsourcing only 11% of parcel deliveries to crowdshippers riding public buses, an e-commerce carrier will require fewer delivery vehicles. Delivery vehicle distances fall by 20%, with matching cuts in emissions.

And even after paying crowdshippers, the carrier will enjoy cost savings.

A young woman with a couple of packages waits at a bus stop
Most passengers polled said they were willing to serve as crowdshippers for a fee. RossHelen/Shutterstock

What practical obstacles must be overcome?

There are several practical considerations.

For a start, would passengers be willing to deliver parcels? A survey of potential crowdshippers had a positive response.

Motivated by being able to earn some income while travelling, most passengers polled said they were willing to serve as crowdshippers. They were especially keen if paid one to two times their transport fare.

Next, might transporting parcels on public transport cause extra congestion or delay during peak-hour commutes? We should avoid adding more loads on crowded buses or trains.

We explored limiting crowdshipping to off-peak hours and found good availability of potential crowdshippers to deliver parcels. Many public transport systems tend to have excess capacity at these times, so making use of this to move parcels is feasible.

Finally, there’s a need to assure parcel shippers, carriers and receivers that the service is reliable. The service platform should be designed to develop and maintain accountability and trust among users. The system would have to be able to verify identity and track parcel status.

Crowdshipping using public transport would be ideal for cities with good public transport networks and high passenger numbers. Similar to outsourcing to a logistics provider, carriers can explore using people movements to complement their regular deliveries.

Cities need new solutions to make urban mobility sustainable. Integrating passenger and freight transport could make city logistics operations more efficient. By carrying out data-driven transport modelling and simulation, we can explore ideas such as crowdshipping, develop trials to test them and bring them closer to realisation.

This article draws on research conducted with Dr Meijing Zhang from Singapore University of Technology and Design.

The Conversation

Lynette Cheah receives funding from the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads. She previously received funding from the Singapore National Research Foundation, Ministry of National Development, Land Transport Authority, Public Transport Council, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), and Daimler Mobility.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Having children plays a complicated role in the rate we age

The effort of reproducing may divert energy away from repairing DNA or fighting illness, which could drive ageing, but a new study suggests that is only the case when environmental conditions are tough

Some say children keep you young, but it’s complicatedJavier Zayas/Getty Images For millennia, we have tried to understand why we age, with the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle proposing it occurs alongside the gradual drying up of the internal moisture necessary for life. In modern times, a leading idea known as the disposable soma hypothesis suggests that ageing is the price we pay for reproduction, with evolution prioritising the passing on of genes above all else. This creates a fundamental trade-off: the immense energy devoted to having and raising offspring comes at the cost of repairing DNA, fighting off illness and keeping organs in good shape. This may particularly apply to women, who invest more in reproduction than men via pregnancy and breastfeeding. However, when scientists have tested this hypothesis by checking if women with more children live shorter lives, the results have been mixed: some studies support the idea, while others have found no effect. “It is very difficult to disentangle what is just correlation [between having more children and a shorter life] and what is the underlying causation, unless you have a good, big dataset that covers several generations,” says Elisabeth Bolund at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who wasn’t involved in the study. Euan Young at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and his colleagues hypothesised that the inconsistency between studies exists because the cost of reproduction isn’t fixed – it depends on a mother’s environment. “In good times, this trade-off isn’t really visible. The trade-off only becomes apparent when times are tough,” says Young. To investigate this idea, the researchers analysed the parish records of more than 4500 Finnish women, spanning 250 years. These included the period of the Great Finnish Famine from 1866 to 1868, providing a means to gauge how hard times affect reproduction and longevity, says Young. They found that among the women who lived before or after the famine or who didn’t have children during it, there was no significant association between the number of children they had and their lifespan. However, for the women who did have children during the famine, their life expectancy decreased by six months for every child they had. The study builds on research published last year that used a dataset from a pre-industrial population in Quebec, Canda, monitored over two centuries, which showed this trade-off in mothers who were probably in poor health or under great stress, but didn’t explore how this was affected by specific environmental conditions. In contrast, Young’s team points to a specific, catastrophic event as the driver that exposes the trade-off for mothers. “This very large dataset makes it feasible to account for confounding factors [such as genetics and lifestyle factors],” says Bolund. “The study gets us as close as we can to identifying causation without running a controlled experiment in the lab.” The study also confirms the energetic demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding, which require hundreds of extra calories per day. During a famine, women can’t get this energy from food, so their bodies pay the price, “lowering basal metabolism [the minimum number of calories your body needs to function at a basic level] and thus slowing or shutting down other important functions, resulting in a decline in health and shorter lifespans”, says Young. It also explains why previous studies sometimes found the trade-off only in lower socioeconomic groups, which were effectively always living in relatively resource-scarce environments, he says. According to Bolund, the fact that this trade-off seems to occur in particularly tough circumstances, and when women typically had many children, may partly explain why women generally live longer than men today, with girls born between 2021 and 2023 in the UK expected to live four years longer than their male counterparts. The costs of reproduction are now fairly low in Western societies, where the average number of children women give birth to has reduced considerably over the centuries, says Bolund. As a result, few women today will probably reach the threshold where the cost to their lifetime becomes obvious. Bolund and her colleagues’ research on a historical population in Utah, for instance, found this only appeared when women had more than five children – well below the 1.6 births that the average woman in the US is expected to have in her lifetime. Other environmental factors may therefore become more significant in explaining the lifespan gap between men and women. Men tend to be more likely to smoke than women and also drink more alcohol, which affect lifespan, says Bolund. The current longevity gap between men and women is probably a combination of the latter’s reduced reproductive costs compared with other times in history and lifestyle differences between the sexes. Research also suggests that sex chromosomal differences are involved. “Sexes differ in a multitude of ways, beyond reproductive costs, so we need to conduct more research into how different factors contribute to sex-specific ageing,” says Young.

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Food
Science

Michigan OKs Landmark Regulations That Push Up-Front Costs to Data Centers

Michigan regulators have adopted landmark standards for the booming data center industry with a plan they say tries to protect residents from subsidizing the industry’s hefty energy use

Michigan regulators on Thursday adopted landmark standards for the booming data center industry with a plan they say tries to protect residents from subsidizing the industry’s hefty energy use.In a 3-0 vote, the Michigan Public Service Commission adopted a rate structure that requires data centers and other energy-intensive industries in Consumers Energy’s territory to sign long-term power contracts with steep penalties for exiting early.The order also requires Consumers to show that data centers will shoulder all costs to build transmission lines, substations and other infrastructure before adding them to the grid.Commission Chair Dan Scripps called it a “balanced approach” that shows Michigan is “open for business from data centers and other large load customers, while also leveraging those potential benefits of the growth … in a way that’s good for all customers.”The deal disappointed some environmentalists, who had pushed for explicit requirements that data center power come from renewable sources. Michigan utilities are legally required to achieve 100% clean energy by 2040. They must detail how they plan to meet that requirement in filings next year.“While the order includes important consumer protection terms, the commission missed an opportunity to emphasize the importance of the state’s climate goals,” said Daniel Abrams, an attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center. The rate structure applies to customers whose energy use exceeds 100 megawatts. Data centers are among very few industries that demand that much power. Often, they demand an order of magnitude more.Consumers serves 1.9 million customers across much of the Lower Peninsula. Company spokesperson Matt Johnson said officials are still reviewing Thursday’s order and “its impact on all stakeholders.“Consumers Energy intends to work hard to continue to attract new businesses, including data centers, to Michigan, in a way that benefits everyone and fuels the state’s economic development,” he added.The deal comes amid an uncertain time for the data industry, which is growing fast because of artificial intelligence. Much more energy is needed to power the transformation, but many industry analysts fear rising AI stocks are a bubble and demand for the technology won’t materialize, leaving utilities and ratepayers to pick up the infrastructure tab for failed projects.Hoping to avoid such an outcome, Consumers in February proposed special regulations that would lock data centers into 15-year contracts that guarantee consistent electricity use and require payments even if a facility ceases or downsizes operations mid-contract.The commission’s decision Thursday approves much of that request, with some significant modifications. DTE takes a different approach The other big utility in Michigan, DTE Energy, is taking a different approach.Rather than establishing a blanket rate structure like Consumers, DTE wants to negotiate its first data center contract individually while aiming to avoid public vetting of the deal.Michigan law allows such expedited reviews in cases that would bring no added costs to utility consumers. DTE officials argue adding the Stargate data center to its system will help keep rates down for everyone by spreading fixed costs among more paying customers. “Given the sizable affordability benefits for our customers, as well as the economic impact the project will have, we think moving forward in this fashion makes the most sense,” spokesperson Jill Wilmot said.But DTE officials also stated in its filing that the company expects to spend some $500 million upgrading its transmission system and building a substation to serve the data center. Critics argue the utility is so intentionally vague it is impossible to vet DTE’s claims about affordability.“It’s just highly concerning that they are trying to keep this somewhat private, because there’s so much at stake,” said Bryan Smigielski, a Michigan organizer with the Sierra Club.Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel also opposes DTE’s quest for expedited review, and has requested a thorough vetting of the proposed contract.Members of the Public Service Commission have not decided whether to grant DTE’s request for quick approval, Scripps said.Michigan’s data center electricity rate deliberations come amid a surge of interest from developers looking to take advantage of new tax breaks that could save the industry tens of millions of dollars. Lawmakers last year voted to exempt large data centers from Michigan’s 6% sales and use tax in an effort to lure the industry to Michigan.Beyond the Stargate campus, DTE is in late-stage negotiations for another 3 gigawatts’ worth of data center capacity, while Consumers Energy is nearing deals for three large data centers amounting to a collective 2 gigawatts of power.Developers are also scoping out rural land throughout the southern Lower Peninsula, from the Grand Rapids area to the outskirts of Monroe.The wave of interest could have big implications for water and land use in Michigan. Hyperscale data centers occupy hundreds of acres apiece. Those that use water vapor to cool the servers inside the facilities — the industry’s most common cooling technique — also use large amounts of water.This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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Why some quantum materials stall while others scale

In a new study, MIT researchers evaluated quantum materials’ potential for scalable commercial success — and identified promising candidates.

People tend to think of quantum materials — whose properties arise from quantum mechanical effects — as exotic curiosities. But some quantum materials have become a ubiquitous part of our computer hard drives, TV screens, and medical devices. Still, the vast majority of quantum materials never accomplish much outside of the lab.What makes certain quantum materials commercial successes and others commercially irrelevant? If researchers knew, they could direct their efforts toward more promising materials — a big deal since they may spend years studying a single material.Now, MIT researchers have developed a system for evaluating the scale-up potential of quantum materials. Their framework combines a material’s quantum behavior with its cost, supply chain resilience, environmental footprint, and other factors. The researchers used their framework to evaluate over 16,000 materials, finding that the materials with the highest quantum fluctuation in the centers of their electrons also tend to be more expensive and environmentally damaging. The researchers also identified a set of materials that achieve a balance between quantum functionality and sustainability for further study.The team hopes their approach will help guide the development of more commercially viable quantum materials that could be used for next generation microelectronics, energy harvesting applications, medical diagnostics, and more.“People studying quantum materials are very focused on their properties and quantum mechanics,” says Mingda Li, associate professor of nuclear science and engineering and the senior author of the work. “For some reason, they have a natural resistance during fundamental materials research to thinking about the costs and other factors. Some told me they think those factors are too ‘soft’ or not related to science. But I think within 10 years, people will routinely be thinking about cost and environmental impact at every stage of development.”The paper appears in Materials Today. Joining Li on the paper are co-first authors and PhD students Artittaya Boonkird, Mouyang Cheng, and Abhijatmedhi Chotrattanapituk, along with PhD students Denisse Cordova Carrizales and Ryotaro Okabe; former graduate research assistants Thanh Nguyen and Nathan Drucker; postdoc Manasi Mandal; Instructor Ellan Spero of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Professor Christine Ortiz of the Department of DMSE; Professor Liang Fu of the Department of Physics; Professor Tomas Palacios of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Associate Professor Farnaz Niroui of EECS; Assistant Professor Jingjie Yeo of Cornell University; and PhD student Vsevolod Belosevich and Assostant Professor Qiong Ma of Boston College.Materials with impactCheng and Boonkird say that materials science researchers often gravitate toward quantum materials with the most exotic quantum properties rather than the ones most likely to be used in products that change the world.“Researchers don’t always think about the costs or environmental impacts of the materials they study,” Cheng says. “But those factors can make them impossible to do anything with.”Li and his collaborators wanted to help researchers focus on quantum materials with more potential to be adopted by industry. For this study, they developed methods for evaluating factors like the materials’ price and environmental impact using their elements and common practices for mining and processing those elements. At the same time, they quantified the materials’ level of “quantumness” using an AI model created by the same group last year, based on a concept proposed by MIT professor of physics Liang Fu, termed quantum weight.“For a long time, it’s been unclear how to quantify the quantumness of a material,” Fu says. “Quantum weight is very useful for this purpose. Basically, the higher the quantum weight of a material, the more quantum it is.”The researchers focused on a class of quantum materials with exotic electronic properties known as topological materials, eventually assigning over 16,000 materials scores on environmental impact, price, import resilience, and more.For the first time, the researchers found a strong correlation between the material’s quantum weight and how expensive and environmentally damaging it is.“That’s useful information because the industry really wants something very low-cost,” Spero says. “We know what we should be looking for: high quantum weight, low-cost materials. Very few materials being developed meet that criteria, and that likely explains why they don’t scale to industry.”The researchers identified 200 environmentally sustainable materials and further refined the list down to 31 material candidates that achieved an optimal balance of quantum functionality and high-potential impact.The researchers also found that several widely studied materials exhibit high environmental impact scores, indicating they will be hard to scale sustainably. “Considering the scalability of manufacturing and environmental availability and impact is critical to ensuring practical adoption of these materials in emerging technologies,” says Niroui.Guiding researchMany of the topological materials evaluated in the paper have never been synthesized, which limited the accuracy of the study’s environmental and cost predictions. But the authors say the researchers are already working with companies to study some of the promising materials identified in the paper.“We talked with people at semiconductor companies that said some of these materials were really interesting to them, and our chemist collaborators also identified some materials they find really interesting through this work,” Palacios says. “Now we want to experimentally study these cheaper topological materials to understand their performance better.”“Solar cells have an efficiency limit of 34 percent, but many topological materials have a theoretical limit of 89 percent. Plus, you can harvest energy across all electromagnetic bands, including our body heat,” Fu says. “If we could reach those limits, you could easily charge your cell phone using body heat. These are performances that have been demonstrated in labs, but could never scale up. That’s the kind of thing we’re trying to push forward."This work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Greenpeace threatens to sue crown estate for driving up cost of offshore wind

Environmental group accuses king’s property management company of ‘milking for profit’ its monopoly ownership of seabedGreenpeace is threatening to sue King Charles’s property management company, accusing it of exploiting its monopoly ownership of the seabed.The environmental lobby group alleges the crown estate has driven up costs for wind power developers and boosted its own profits, as well as the royal household’s income, due to the “aggressive” way it auctions seabed rights. Continue reading...

Greenpeace is threatening to sue King Charles’s property management company, accusing it of exploiting its monopoly ownership of the seabed.The environmental lobby group alleges the crown estate has driven up costs for wind power developers and boosted its own profits, as well as the royal household’s income, due to the “aggressive” way it auctions seabed rights.The crown estate, as the legal owner of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is responsible for auctioning offshore wind rights. It has benefited from the huge growth in the industry, commanding hefty option fees from renewable energy developers to secure areas of the seabed to build their windfarms.It made a £1.1bn profit in its financial year ended in March, double its level just two years ago.Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said the estate should be “managing the seabed in the interest of the nation and the common good, not as an asset to be milked for profit and outrageous bonuses”.“We should leave no stone unturned in looking for solutions to lower energy bills that are causing misery to millions of households,” he said.“Given how crucial affordable bills and clean energy are to the government’s agenda, the chancellor should use her powers of direction to ask for an independent review of how these auctions are run. If the problem isn’t fixed before the next round, we may need to let a court decide whether or not what’s happening is lawful.”Greenpeace argues the crown estate has a legal duty not to exploit its monopoly position as owner of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but that it is now in breach of this.The lobby group said it was concerned the crown estate was rationing supply of the seabed to protect high prices, and argued this could harm the development of offshore wind power in the UK.The crown estate has reportedly rejected Greenpeace’s claims, arguing the lobby group has misinterpreted the estate’s legal duties.About 12% of crown estate profits flow to the monarchy to fund its work. This was lowered from 25% in 2023 to offset the rise in profits from offshore wind projects.skip past newsletter promotionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe UK’s wind industry is at a critical juncture as the government plans to double onshore wind and quadruple offshore wind power capacity by the end of the decade.The crown estate, which also includes a portfolio of London properties and rural real estate, is worth £15bn. The property assets in London, which is concentrated around Regent Street and St James’s, are valued at £7.1bn.A spokesperson for the crown estate said: “Greenpeace has misunderstood the crown estate’s legal duties and leasing processes. Option fees are not fixed by the crown estate. They are set by the developers through open, competitive auctions and reflect market appetite at the time. As our net revenue is returned to the Treasury, option fees help to ensure that taxpayers benefit from the requisite value from the development of our scarce and precious seabed resource.“The crown estate is accelerating offshore wind in line with government policy to move forward the energy transition at pace and improve energy security.”The Treasury was approached for comment.

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New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule

Poor economics drove the aging New Hampshire plant offline three years early, even as the Trump administration pushes to revitalize coal.

Even as the federal government attempts to prop up the waning coal industry, New England’s last coal-fired power plant has ceased operations three years ahead of its planned retirement date. The closure of the New Hampshire facility paves the way for its owner to press ahead with an initiative to transform the site into a clean energy complex including solar panels and battery storage systems. “The end of coal is real, and it is here,” said Catherine Corkery, chapter director for Sierra Club New Hampshire. ​“We’re really excited about the next chapter.” News of the closure came on the same day the Trump administration announced plans to resuscitate the coal sector by opening millions of acres of federal land to mining operations and investing $625 million in life-extending upgrades for coal plants. The administration had already released a blueprint for rolling back coal-related environmental regulations. The announcement was the latest offensive in the administration’s pro-coal agenda. The federal government has twice extended the scheduled closure date of the coal-burning J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan, and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has declared it a mission of the administration to keep coal plants open, saying the facilities are needed to ensure grid reliability and lower prices. However, the closure in New Hampshire — so far undisputed by the federal government — demonstrates that prolonging operations at some facilities just doesn’t make economic sense for their owners. “Coal has been incredibly challenged in the New England market for over a decade,” said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association. Read Next Nobody wants this gas plant. Trump is forcing it to stay open. Rebecca Egan McCarthy Merrimack Station, a 438-megawatt power plant, came online in the 1960s and provided baseload power to the New England region for decades. Gradually, though, natural gas — which is cheaper and more efficient — took over the regional market. In 2000, gas-fired plants generated less than 15 percent of the region’s electricity; last year, they produced more than half. Additionally, solar power production accelerated from 2010 on, lowering demand on the grid during the day and creating more evening peaks. Coal plants take longer to ramp up production than other sources, and are therefore less economical for these shorter bursts of demand, Dolan said. In recent years, Merrimack operated only a few weeks annually. In 2024, the plant generated just 0.22 percent of the region’s electricity. It wasn’t making enough money to justify continued operations, observers said. The closure ​“is emblematic of the transition that has been occurring in the generation fleet in New England for many years,” Dolan said. ​“The combination of all those factors has meant that coal facilities are no longer economic in this market.” Granite Shore Power, the plant’s owner, first announced its intention to shutter Merrimack in March 2024, following years of protests and legal wrangling by environmental advocates. The company pledged to cease coal-fired operations by 2028 to settle a lawsuit claiming that the facility was in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. The agreement included another commitment to shut down the company’s Schiller plant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by the end of 2025; this smaller plant can burn coal but hasn’t done so since 2020. At the time, the company outlined a proposal to repurpose the 400-acre Merrimack site, just outside Concord, for clean energy projects, taking advantage of existing electric infrastructure to connect a 120-megawatt combined solar and battery storage system to the grid. It is not yet clear whether changes in federal renewable energy policies will affect this vision. In a statement announcing the Merrimack closure, Granite Shore Power was less specific about its plans than it had been, saying, ​“We continue to consider all opportunities for redevelopment” of the site, but declining to follow up with more detail. Still, advocates are looking ahead with optimism. “This is progress — there’s no doubt the math is there,” Corkery said. ​“It is never over until it is over, but I am very hopeful.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule on Oct 12, 2025.

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Animals

A Low Carbon Future for China’s Furnace Cities

China’s economic development and rapid urbanization has led to a dramatic rise in energy consumption due to excessive heating and air-conditioning causing carbon emissions of immense proportions. China’s government has set the ambitious target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40–45% by 2020 against the 2005 baseline. A UK/China-funded team working on how to solve the problem in some of the most extreme climate regions in China. The team discovers groundbreaking solutions using computational-fluid-dynamics simulations.

CO2
Energy
Climate

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