{"id":434997,"date":"2026-05-19T12:29:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T12:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434997\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T12:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T12:29:21","slug":"the-worlds-first-major-geoengineering-startup-unveils-its-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434997\/","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s First Major Geoengineering Startup Unveils its Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Current conditions: Winds topping 60 miles per hour are howling through the mountains in Montana and the Dakotas \u2022 An early heatwave in the Central United States is driving temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit \u2022 Though it\u2019s still early in the season, the Arctic is on track to experience its highest number of wildfire ignitions in 3,000 years. <\/p>\n

THE TOP FIVE1. A secretive geoengineering startup unveils its technology<\/p>\n

Stardust Solutions, the startup led by former Israeli government physicians that\u2019s promising technology that can reflect sunlight back into space and artificially cool the planet, has released information on the proprietary particle it wants to spray in the atmosphere. On Thursday, the company laid out blueprints for two separate particles, both nearly spherical and half a micron in size. The materials are made from natural compounds frequently used in toothpaste and food additives. The first-generation technology is amorphous silica, which the company called \u201cfully bio-safe, manufacturable at scale today, and at a very advanced stage of validation.\u201d The second-generation formulation adds a calcium carbonate core inside the silica shell. \u201cThe reason is straightforward: At high doses, any particle that absorbs a meaningful amount of the Earth\u2019s outgoing infrared radiation will heat the stratosphere, which is a side effect you want to avoid,\u201d the company said. \u201cGen 2 is as reflective to the incoming sunlight (visible light), but is more transparent to the outgoing infrared radiation, so it can be deployed at higher doses without that heating effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Stardust put out the first ethical guidelines<\/a> to which it plans to hold itself. Heatmap\u2019s Robinson Meyer broke the news<\/a> in October that the company was emerging from stealth with $60 million in funding to support its commercialization. \u201cThe idea that certain interventions could reduce the chance of really bad climate outcomes, like collapse of Antarctic ice sheets, isn\u2019t new. The Stardust patents show that these ideas are now moving from the realm of the theoretical to the realm of the possible,\u201d Hannah Safford, a climate expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said in a statement Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s time to take climate intervention strategies more seriously, and rigorously evaluate the risks of these strategies against the risks of failing to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Cleveland blocks a $1.6 billion data center<\/p>\n

Cleveland, Ohio\u2019s second-largest city, has rejected a permit application for a $1.6 data center on a 35-acre lot in the Slavic Village neighborhood. The city, the Cleveland Signal<\/a> reported, \u201coffered no details about why it was rejecting it.\u201d In a statement, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said he held \u201cserious concerns about hyperscale, standalone data centers being placed in residential neighborhoods.\u201d The Democrat said he was echoing voters\u2019 concerns about the computer farms. <\/p>\n

Roughly 25 data centers were canceled in the first quarter of this year due to mounting local opposition, Rob reported in an exclusive<\/a> earlier this month. Polling from Heatmap Pro<\/a>, meanwhile, shows that public support for data centers has nosedived from even its paltry position last fall.<\/p>\n

3. Cuba just ran out of fuel <\/p>\n

\"\"\/ A man cooks with firewood during a blackout in Havana this week.Yamil LAGE \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Cuban government announced that it has run out of diesel and fuel oil as the Caribbean nation enters its fifth month without a large shipment of crude oil. \u201cWe have absolutely no fuel [oil] and absolutely no diesel,\u201d Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said Wednesday in remarks carried on state-run broadcasters as protests gathered in Havana. \u201cWe have no reserves.\u201d On Thursday, the Financial Times<\/a> reported, Cuba\u2019s national grid operator UNE said that much of the island\u2019s eastern provinces were still without power after the latest blackouts. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening tariffs on any country shipping fuel to Cuba. \u201cThe only thing we have is gas from our own wells, whose production has increased, and domestic crude oil, whose production is also rising,\u201d de la O Levy said. \u201cThe situation is very tense.\u201d In the country\u2019s state-controlled newspaper Gramna<\/a>, Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel accused the U.S. of implementing a \u201cgenocidal energy blockade.\u201d Still, he said, the U.S. has \u201chad to acknowledge that, despite the brutal measures of economic and energy strangulation decreed by the U.S., Cuba remains standing; it is not a failed state.\u201d As a result, the communist leader continued, Washington is \u201cthereby admitting that the crisis gripping us is the result of the severe economic war they are waging against us and the energy persecution.\u201d <\/p>\n

Under the leftist regime of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, Venezuela once served as Cuba\u2019s main supplier of oil. Mexico\u2019s left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum has faced heavy U.S. pressure against sending shipments to the island. Just one large oil tanker, the Russian-flagged Anatoly Kolodkin, has brought crude oil to Cuba since December, The Guardian<\/a> reported. \u201cWe are back in the stone age,\u201d independent journalist Yoani Sanchez said in a broadcast Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sign up to receive Heatmap AM in your inbox every morning:<\/p>\n

4. Bipartisan bill would prevent future presidents from blocking LNG approvals<\/p>\n

Texas Republican John Cornyn and Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman introduced a Senate bill Thursday to block future presidential administrations from halting approvals of new liquified natural gas projects. Politico<\/a> described the LNG Export Security Act as \u201ca bipartisan rebuke of former President Joe Biden\u2019s move in 2024 to free new export permits for natural gas\u201d while the economic and environmental effects of selling more fuel overseas were being studied. A federal judge later halted the pause, but the pause nevertheless enraged Republicans, who later moved to crush the solar and wind sectors.<\/p>\n

5. Clean energy financing startup Crux nets $500 million <\/p>\n

The clean energy project finance startup Crux has received a $500 million debt facility from Nuveen Energy Infrastructure Credit as part of the company\u2019s expansion. While New York-based Crux was initially built to facilitate the transfer of lucrative green tax credits, the financing from insurer TIAA\u2019s investment manager will \u201chelp expand its role as a general partner for clean energy and manufacturing investments,\u201d Bloomberg<\/a> reported. <\/p>\n

In the midst of congressional negotiations last year in the fate of the clean energy tax credits, Crux CEO Alfred Johnson described<\/a> the company\u2019s expansive vision to Heatmap\u2019s Katie Brigham. \u201cAll parts of the capital stack are opaque, illiquid, bespoke and manual. These are private transactions that require a ton of documentation, models, advisory lawyers. But it doesn’t have to be as bad as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE KICKER<\/p>\n

Once stagnant, the nuclear industry in North America is seeing a real revival. The region now has 90 projects under development across the continent, with eight already breaking ground, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute\u2019s latest state of the industry report<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Current conditions: Winds topping 60 miles per hour are howling through the mountains in Montana and the Dakotas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64402,153784,4442,5803,219,1667,273,2386,111,139,69,135,147,3694],"class_list":["post-434997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-adaptation","tag-am-briefing","tag-climate","tag-climate-tech","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-homepage","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}