A Swedish startup could have the answer to making the wind turbine industry greener: Swedish engineering and industrial design startup Modvion is banking on wood to help make the wind turbine industry greener, possibly lowering its carbon footprint by over 90%, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The company is building a 40-ton tower out of wood as part of a plan to set up the world’s tallest turbine made of timber within the coming weeks. The turbine tower will be sold to a utility providing clean energy to local households and factories. “The world is facing a climate crisis, and we need to switch energy sources,” Modvion’s CEO Otto Lundman said.

Durable wood: The project, located outside Sweden’s Skara, is manufactured from Finnish spruce that is laminated for strength and protection against the elements and fire. The modules are piled on trucks at one of its facilities in Gothenburg and then pasted together on site. The timber tower will be home to a recycled Vestas V90 2 MW machine, with the Danish wind leader also providing blades to crown the tower, which is slated to be 150 meters tall upon completion.

Why this matters for both the environment and the industry: Wood is a carbon sink and is renewable, in contrast to steel production — responsible for c. 8% of the energy industry’s carbon footprint — which would require tns of USD to decarbonize, according to Bloomberg. A more sustainable option would prove handy to the wind industry, which is already being hit by higher costs, supply chain snags, and financing obstacles due to higher interest rates.

EV road trip reveals inconsistencies in charging infrastructure: A Swiss-led team’s 6.5k km journey across Europe and the Gulf to Qatar in two electric vans highlighted mismatched charging infrastructures across the 12 countries they passed through, VOA news reported. The journey to Doha was originally meant to raise awareness about the benefits of EVs. During their trip, the team noted that charging their vehicles was easier in some countries than others, reporting that in Jordan they've had to adapt their European car systems, as Chinese hardware was all they found; while in Europe, paying was a struggle and the only way to complete charging point payments, was through installing a plethora of apps.