The Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA) manages green energy projects for the City and raises the money to make investments that will save electricity in the long run. The PEA is celebrating its first 10 years and looking forward to the next energy wins. Katie Bartolotta, the PEA’s vice president of policy and strategic partnerships, spoke
More
Organizers with Philly Thrive and People’s Tech Project aren’t waiting for an artificial intelligence data center in the Bellwether District to be announced. In the deep freeze of February, the Point Breeze environmental justice advocacy group took to the sidewalks of Grays Ferry, knocking on 1,876 doors and speaking with nearly 500 people. The advocates
More
Octavia Nash was back for more. She had joined a friend for a paddle on the Delaware River with Camden’s Center for Aquatic Sciences once before and returned for a free kayaking session at Pyne Poynt Park in mid-July, this time with her fiancée. “I like the peacefulness,” she says. “Oh my God, it’s like
More
Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources is keeping an eye on Baltimore checkerspots. The once-common butterflies are in decline. They’re not rare enough to be endangered, but the state will be in a good position to step in if needed. In the Keystone State, no agency is tasked with ensuring their survival. The Pennsylvania Fish and
More
The helicopter was worth a shot, Dave Fahnestock thought. The owner of Hands on the Earth Orchard in Lititz, Lancaster County, which sells apples and peaches at farmers markets in Clark Park, Rittenhouse Square and Bala Cynwyd, hoped the downdraft from the propellers would mix warmer air with the freezing air hugging the ground across
More
The past three summers in Philadelphia have seen smoke drifting overhead, making for beautiful sunsets and, when it settles close to the ground, hazardous air. That smoke came from forest fires that burned thousands of miles away in the boreal forests of Canada. These woods cover 270 million hectares (or about one million square miles)
More
When Grid visited the LandHealth Institute (LHI) nursery in May, community nursery operations lead Sara Mae Henke and native plant nursery associate Marcelino Smith were repotting hundreds of tiny bee balm plants from flats into pots to prepare them for sale. Behind them rose the arching end of a high tunnel greenhouse sheathed in plastic
More
Ihad expected the logs, half-deflated basketballs, plastic bottles and other assorted urban debris when I tagged along with a crew from the Philadelphia Water Department tasked with cleaning out the Fairmount Dam fishway back in 2012. What I hadn’t expected was to see the workers pull out two flathead catfish the size of toddlers. The
More
Every human produces a little more than 4.5 ounces of excrement per day. Multiplied by the 2.2 million customers of the Philadelphia Water Department’s wastewater system, the cumulative daily dump equals about 620,811 pounds, or about 310 tons. The story of biosolids (treated sewage sludge) starts with clean water in the toilet bowls of the
More
On Sept. 27, 2025, a wood thrush flew past the David Rittenhouse Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania on its way to Central America. We know this because a tiny solar-powered radio transmitter on the bird’s back sent out a signal that was picked up by a receiver on the roof of the building. That
More