A Fusion Power Milestone, A South Carolina Battery Plant And Fuel-Cell Powered Semis

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.

Earlier this week, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that for the first time, it was able to create a nuclear fusion reaction that yielded more energy than it took to create the reaction. This represents a significant milestone towards fusion power, writes Forbes Energy Editor Chris Helman. But don’t count on this type of reaction to be what leads to an actual fusion power plant. That’s because the inefficiencies of the process being used by the lab would make it difficult to scale. That said, there’s a number of fusion energy products on the horizon that claim they’re close to potential commercialization–perhaps even by the end of the decade, if everything goes right. You can read more about them in this story.

A quick housekeeping note: This will be the last edition of Current Climate for the year as we go into the holiday season. We’ll return with the latest in sustainability news on January 7.

The Big Read

The Dumb Money Driving The Plant-Based Meat Boom

In an exclusive excerpt from Raw Deal, the new book by Forbes Food & Drink Editor Chloe Sorvino, investors see companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as a way to help save the planet. The problem is, they also want to get rich. Instead, they may die trying.

Read more here.

Discoveries And Innovations

Robots made by Kansas-based GreenField aim to help farmers reduce the need for herbicides by automating weeding in the fields.

A new analysis suggests that being exposed to heat waves or extremely cold weather increased people’s risk of death from heart disease.

A new study suggests there may be vastly more microplastics in the atmosphere than previously estimated.