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Ford Motor Company announced intentions to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle for ride sharing by 2021. The company also announced 4 new investments and collaborations that expand its autonomous vehicle research, and set out plans to double its Silicon Valley Research and Innovation Center team by the end of 2017.

U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions from natural gas are expected to exceed CO2 emissions from coal by 10% by the end of 2016, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report.

The Coca-Cola Company has achieved its goal to replenish 100% of the water used in its global sales volume and production by the end of 2020, five years ahead of schedule. The company also made progress against another water-related goal by increasing its water use efficiency by 2.5% from 2014 to 2015.

Patagonia saw an astounding $10 million in Black Friday sales  ― five times its own expectations ― and, as promised, will donate every cent toward helping save the environment. The high-end outdoor apparel and gear retailer announced the record-breaking haul Monday, saying the "enormous love" its customers showed to the planet will benefit hundreds of grassroots environmental organizations around the world.

Amazon Web Services unveiled five new solar projects in Virginia, totaling 180 MW of renewable energy capacity. The projects include four 20 MW solar farms, and one 100 MW facility. The projects will be operational before the end of 2017.

Ending food waste is a key concern across the Western world, with new initiatives cropping up almost every day. Now, a group of British companies and universities have won access to a £340 million EU innovation program aimed at changing the way we eat, grow and distribute food. The new project, called EIT Food, has ambitious aims to halve food waste in Europe within a decade and reduce diet-related illness diet by 2030. It has received €400 million (£340m) of EU research funding, matched by €1.2 billion (£1 billion) of funding from industry and other sources over seven years.

The Energy Information Agency emphasized the growing importance of offshore wind to the US energy landscape in its year-end summary, according to this piece. The summary also touted the significance of Deepwater Wind's Block Island wind farm off of Rhode Island -- the first of its kind in the US.

China's 13th Five-Year-Plan on Energy Development (Energy 13FYP) might be one of the most anticipated energy blueprints in the world for its far-reaching implications for the carbon trajectory of the planet's largest emitter. On Jan 5, 2017, the National Energy Administration finally unveiled the plan to reporters, with a set of 2020 targets covering everything from total energy consumption to installed wind energy capacity. Before we delve into details of the plan, one thing is worth noting: with the Energy 13FYP, China might have once again raised ambitions for its low-carbon future, highlighting the urgency that this smog-ridden country attaches to moving away from fossil fuels. This time round, policymakers seem even more determined to squeeze out coal's share in the country's energy mix, lowering its 2020 percentage in primary energy consumption from 62% to 58%. The country is also aiming higher for renewables: installed capacity of wind energy and solar energy should reach "more than 210GW" and "more than 110GW", respectively, by 2020; higher than what was declared at the end of 2014.

Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi announced that India would work towards ratifying the Paris Agreement by the end of this year, following a meeting with President Obama. The state leaders also launched two initiatives to deploy $20 million to provide clean and renewable electricity to as many as 1 million households by 2020 and deploy $40 million to support small-scale renewable energy projects in India.

Fazenda da Toca, a private enterprise in São Paulo, is demonstrating the viability of large scale organic farming and agroforestry, including on land with highly degraded soils. Toca could effectively end the myth that agroforestry is not viable at a large scale, that it's too expensive and too labor intensive to be attractive to the private sector.

. As is the case with many companies who tout the magic year 2020, Hershey promises it will buy 100 percent responsible and sustainable cacao by the end of that year, and boasts it is ahead of schedule of that goal by having already met it halfway. Hershey also showcases a program that it says helped 31,000 farmers in nations such as Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, without divulging how - while saying they are learning "information on best practices in sustainable cacao farming." Such a vague disclosure is not going to mollify critics who have long said the global chocolate industry is one that provides indulgences for wealthy citizens at the expense of some of the world's

Lego is pumping millions of dollars into its quest to find new, sustainable materials for its popular plastic toy bricks. While the company's goal with this initiative is to build better toys, it may end up shifting the plastics industry away from its oil-based roots.

Some of China's provinces and companies, however, are moving into business operations that foster the growth of the circular economy, which means designing products that can be taken apart, re-blended or recycled so that waste is not an end result. This is complemented by the fact that the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation (CPCIF) recently signed on to the World Plastics Council, which also has a goal of reducing plastic waste in the environment. 

Bad news for those with a sweet tooth: the absence of pollinators such as bees and butterflies would signal the end of dessert as we know it. Whole Foods Market recently removed all products from an area of the supermarket reliant on the creatures, mirroring past initiatives in the diary aisle and the produce section. The results, seen above in the bakery department for the company's Share the Buzz campaign, are dramatic.

On Friday, a group of children suing the government for inaction on climate change scored a major victory, as a judge ruled that the Washington State Department of Ecology must deliver an emissions reduction rule by the end of this year. That decision follows another major win in mid-April, when an Oregon judge ruled that a similar lawsuit could go forward despite opposition from the fossil fuel industry.

According to a recent United Nations University report, e-waste generation is growing fast in both total volume and per capita measures throughout East and South-East Asia between 2010 and 2015. Driven by rising incomes and high demand for new gadgets and appliances, the average increase in e-waste across all 12 countries and areas analysed was 63% in the five years ending in 2015 and totalled 12.3 million tonnes. China's more than doubled to 6.7 million tonnes, up 107%.

The Paris Agreement and the global divestment campaign has secured one of its biggest victories to date, after banking giant Deutsche Bank announced it would halt investment in new coal projects in line with its commitment to the international climate change treaty.

"Just 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling globally, one third ends up in the natural environment and if current trends continue, by 2050 our oceans could contain more plastics than fish, by weight," says Rob Opsomer, lead of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's new plastics economy initiative. "We need to fundamentally rethink the way we produce, use and recover plastics, redesign plastic packaging and adopt common standards."

VF Corporation has released its first-ever Forest Derived Materials Policy. The company joins over 65 other apparel brands and producers supporting the CanopyStyle initiative, which aims to eliminate the use of ancient and endangered forests in the production of forest derived fabrics such as rayon and viscose from the apparel and fashion industries by the end of 2017.

Cosmetics brand Garnier launched an awareness campaign in the U.S. to promote the importance of properly recycling beauty product packaging in bathrooms, in partnership with DoSomething.org. The initiative aims to divert 10 million beauty products from the landfill by the end of 2017.