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New York City's Department of Parks & Recreation has launched a Street Tree Map that allows users to not only learn about the city's different tree species, but also about the ecological and economic benefits they offer to the city. Using figures laid out by the U.S. Forest Service, the city, along with a team of 2,300 volunteers, completed a citywide tree census and used the data to calculate the estimated annual benefit in dollars trees provide to New York City.

H&M, the second-largest clothing retailer in the world, is working with German textile recycler SOEX Group on a system where previously used fibers would make up the majority of the material they use in clothing manufacturing. H&M's head of sustainability, Anna Gedda, says the company has collected 34,000 pounds of waste since the program began.

The U.S. Government collaborated with India and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to launch a $20 million initiative that aims to increase funding opportunities for renewable energy projects - such as distributed solar - across India.

India is delaying a decision on asking for a dispute settlement panel at the World Trade Organisation against domestic content regulations in renewable energy programmes run by eight states in the US as it is hoping to work out a "mutually beneficial'' solution with the new regime under Republican leader Donald Trump. "New Delhi is still hopeful that it could work out a compromise with Washington on the flexible implementation of the WTO verdict against it in the solar power programme dispute. It may decide not to ask for a panel against US renewable energy programmes if it gets an assurance from the Trump administration on leniency in the solar case," a government official told BusinessLine.

North Carolina's Proximity Hotel is the first US hotel to receive the Green Building Council's LEED Platinum status, due in part to elevators that generate power and other features that help the hotel use 40% less energy than comparable competitors. "The only ambition was, let's sincerely consider sustainable practices with each of our decisions," said Dennis Quaintance, CEO of Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants and Hotels.

Global trade has made it easier to buy things. But our consumption habits often fuel threats to biodiversity - such as deforestation, overhunting and overfishing - thousands of miles away. Now, scientists have mapped how major consuming countries drive threats to endangered species elsewhere. Such maps could be useful for finding the most efficient ways to protect critical areas important for biodiversity, the researchers suggest in a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. For example, the maps show that commodities used in the United States and the European Union exert several threats on marine species in Southeast Asia, mainly due to overfishing, pollution and aquaculture. The U.S. also exerts pressure on hotspots off the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and at the mouth of the Orinoco around Trinidad and Tobago. European Union's impacts extend to the islands around Madagascar: Réunion, Mauritius and the Seychelles. The maps also revealed some unexpected linkages. For instance, the impact of U.S. consumption in Brazil appears to be much greater in southern Brazil (in the Brazilian Highlands where agriculture and grazing are extensive) than inside the Amazon basin, which receives a larger chunk of the attention. The U.S. also has high biodiversity footprint in southern Spain and Portugal, due to their impacts on threatened fish and bird species. These countries are rarely perceived as threat hotspots.

Wind generation in the US has the potential to reach grid parity with natural gas and other energy sources by 2035 without any federal support, according to consulting firm Macquarie Research. "We believe the US is now the most attractive wind market in the world due to the increased visibility of demand in the long term," Macquarie said.

Using automatic analysis, Global Forest Watch's new PALM Risk Tool determines the level of risk that a particular mill is using palm oil from illegally deforested sources, making it a powerful platform for companies to not only better understand their supply chains, but figure out how to mitigate risk and allocate limited resources towards achieving zero-deforestation goals.

Toyota says it will use 100 percent renewable energy at is new North American headquarters in Plano, Texas.

Now, a company called HyperSolar claims to have developed a commercially-scalable method of producing hydrogen using only sunlight and water.

BREEAM, the leading UK green-building rating system, has crossed the pond and is looking to take on its US counterpart LEED.

China could use wind to create more than 25% of its electricity by 2030, according to new Nature Energy study. China added 145 gigawatts of installed wind capacity in 2015 -- more than anywhere else, including the US and Europe.

The World Wildlife Fund released its Soy Scorecard, which uses cultivation, land use, and workers' rights data to score the practices of 133 European companies in the soy industry.

If the 5,589 largest publicly traded companies in the US reduced their paper waste by a mere 1 percent, it would save them nearly $1 billion in total, according to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

The US could create jobs, curb carbon emissions and encourage economic prosperity by switching to a clean energy economy, write Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif. A recent report said that the US could create 2 million new jobs by 2050 if it adopted a goal to source 50% of its total electricity from clean energy sources by 2030. "Congress has an opportunity to put our country on a path toward a clean energy future that improves our economy while reinforcing our commitment to reducing dangerous carbon pollution," they write

Falling coal use in China and the US and a worldwide shift towards renewable energy have kept greenhouse gas emissions level for a second year running, one of the world's leading energy analysts has said.

A shopping center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., has been named the first BREEAM USA In-Use certified building in the country, a designation for sustainability efforts at pre-existing nonresidential structures. The Oaks Shopping Center features 6,000 solar panels, LED lighting, a mixed-materials recycling campaign and more to help minimize the building's environmental impact.

Carbon Brief analysis shows the UK's CO2 emissions fell by 5.8% in 2016, after a record 52% drop in coal use.

Carbon emissions in the UK are down to 420 million tons annually, or about what the country emitted more than 120 years ago, according to a report from Carbon Brief. A 52% decrease in coal consumption during 2016 fueled an overall decline in carbon emissions of 5.8% for the year.

The citizens of four major European countries think the impacts of climate change such as severe floods and storms are already affecting them, according to a major new polling study. The research dispels the idea that global warming is widely seen as a future problem, and also shows strong support for action to tackle global warming, including subsidies for clean energy and big financial penalties for nations that refuse to be part of the international climate deal signed in Paris in 2015 - as US president Donald Trump has threatened.

Utility FirstEnergy, one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the US, has responded to shareholder demands and agreed to reduce its carbon emissions, the New York Times reports. The company - the eighth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the US according to the Greenhouse 100 index - says it will study and report on what it can do to meet President Barack Obama's goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.