“Not in my backyard” is the rallying cry of citizens everywhere resisting projects proposed for their locality. Whether it’s affordable housing, a waste treatment plant, or a new data center, they may recognize the benefit of the activity. They just don’t want it near them. And the roots of that resistance differ from place to place. When it comes to the ongoing transition from fossil fuels to renewables, companies and policymakers need to know where, exactly, people are coming from.

The Italian island of Sardinia is a textbook example. As IEEE Spectrum’s power and energy editor Emily Waltz discovered when she traveled there last October, Sardinian opposition to wind and solar projects runs deep. It spurred a quarter of the voting population to queue up in public squares in 2024 to sign a petition banning all construction of renewable energy.

Waltz was surprised. She went there to see a promising new grid-scale energy storage system that uses domes inflated with carbon dioxide. While reporting on that project, she interviewed residents, engineers, activists, and professors about their attitudes toward climate change and the Italian government’s grand plans for renewable energy on the island. And Waltz soon learned of Sardinians’ profound antipathy toward renewable energy and its deep ties to a history of invasion, occupation, and exploitation stretching back 2,700 years.

It started with the Phoenicians and then extended through the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Iberians. Sardinia was absorbed into a newly unified Italy in 1861, and it became an autonomous region of Italy in 1948. The island’s population is justifiably suspicious of outsiders, including the Italian government. “When you’re in Sardinia, the weight of history—you can feel it like in the air,” Waltz told me. “And it gets passed down from one generation to the next.”

Now, Italy needs Sardinia to produce even more power to meet the country’s climate goals—something that Sardinians see as Rome’s problem, not theirs. “Sardinia already exports about 30 percent of its electricity. It’s not like they need more,” Waltz says. “So it’s hard to make the case to build, build, build.”

The result of Waltz’s old-fashioned shoe leather reporting is this month’s cover story. She notes that the Sardinians she talked to aren’t climate-change deniers, and they don’t object to renewables per se. They just don’t like the way corporations and Italian policymakers are trying to plug into Sardinia like it’s one giant battery rather than the home of an ancient and proud people.

“I think Sardinians would be more receptive to renewable projects if it was more of a ground-up, grassroots approach,” Waltz says. Indeed, this homegrown approach is already working in some places in Sardinia. She knows of more than 50 projects, called energy communities, where the residents are deploying renewables themselves. The idea also holds promise for other places struggling to get locals to buy into the renewable-energy transition.

The Sardinian experience is both a cautionary tale and a blueprint. Ignore the weight of history that communities carry and your project risks failure. Meet the people where they are and you might just get somewhere. The same lesson applies whether you’re in Sulawesi or sub-Saharan Africa. You just have to show up to learn it.

AI companies have grown into data-hungry entities as their models require ever-larger datasets to train on. To meet that need, many AI startups defy long-standing internet conventions — like respecting robots.txt files, which signal to automated crawlers which parts of a website are off-limits — and scrape data aggressively. This has forced websites to restrict access to their data and, in some cases, strike licensing deals with AI companies. Fitness and social running company Strava is making a move in this direction by restricting its website and introducing fees for developer access.

To stop scraping, the company is increasing security around its website and will now only allow authenticated users to view certain data. Earlier, users were able to see details like public profiles and fitness club listings without logging in. The company is putting all that data behind authentication to protect it from unauthorized AI scraping.

On the API front, developers could previously start building apps on Strava through a free, tiered access program — applying for basic access first, then requesting more as their app grew. Now the company is adding a flat $11.99 per month fee for all developers, though it noted the price may vary by geography.

Strava said its developer community has grown from 185,000 members last year to 241,000 this year, and the company plans to continue supporting them. As part of that, Strava also plans to add support for Model Context Protocol (MCP), an emerging standard that lets AI assistants and apps access external data in a structured way, giving Strava more control over exactly what gets shared and how.

The company is also planning to retire some API endpoints — discrete access points that let outside apps pull specific data, like club details — to protect user data. Strava had already tightened API rules in 2024, banning its use for AI training and limiting third-party apps from displaying other users’ data. Those changes drew backlash from developers who said their apps would be severely affected.

While some developers may accept paying a subscription fee, sunsetting certain API endpoints could still impact dependent apps. Strava is giving developers a 90-day grace period before making these changes.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Michael Martin, Strava’s CEO, said unchecked AI scraping could be the death knell of the public internet.

“AI companies are ruthlessly scraping public websites, given their endless need for training data, which is degrading site performance across the board,” Martin said. We’ve had multiple instances in the last several months where performance has been diminished and, in some cases, impaired. Beyond scraping the public sites, they’re also trying to use our API to get access to our data, ignoring API terms.”

He noted that Strava has refused overtures from leading AI labs seeking data licensing deals. He specifically singled out Perplexity, saying the AI search startup routed its scraping through aggregator services to obscure its origin despite being turned away. This is consistent with Perplexity having been accused of similar behavior elsewhere in the past.

Martin also flagged server overload caused by poorly built vibe-coded apps, whose API calls are often inefficiently structured and generate a disproportionate load on Strava’s systems. It’s a pattern: when Meta banned third-party chatbots from WhatsApp last year, it made a similar argument about system overhead.

The timing probably isn’t coincidental. Strava confidentially filed for an IPO earlier this year, and its move to protect its data may be intended to signal data discipline to prospective investors. The comparison to Reddit’s 2024 crackdown on API access is one Martin was quick to address. Unlike Reddit, which priced API access by the number of calls (making it unaffordable for many app developers), Strava is betting a flat fee keeps the developer ecosystem intact.

“We want the users to feel that they own their data and feel comfortable with how we are controlling and securing it. But we want the developers to continue to flourish and grow,” Martin said.

As SpaceX counts down to what could be the largest IPO in history, the race to build the next generation of launch vehicles is heating up. Asia wants in. Startups across Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea are racing to establish themselves in a market long dominated by the U.S. and China.

One of them is Unastella, a four-year-old South Korean startup that just closed a $24 million Series B, bringing its total funding to $44 million. The company launched its own rocket, the Una Express-I, from South Korean soil in May 2025.

The Seoul-based rocket startup is developing its own launch vehicles and engines, with an initial focus on small satellite launch services. Unastella’s near-term focus is validating its technology and business model through orbital launches, with crewed suborbital spaceflight as a longer-term goal, founder and CEO Jae Park told TechCrunch.

Unastella uses a kerosene and liquid oxygen propulsion system, one of the most proven combinations in rocket history, and one that is also used by SpaceX’s Falcon series. On top of that, the company swapped out the traditional turbo pump for an electric motor pump, a simpler and cheaper alternative that Rocket Lab has already validated in flight.

The tradeoff is payload. Electric motor pumps are heavier, which means less room for satellites. But Park said that’s a deliberate decision.

“We’re not an R&D group trying to build the most impressive rocket,” Park said. “We’re a commercial launch company trying to get to market fast.”

Park also notes that Unastella handles everything in-house, such as design, manufacturing, ground operations, and flight data. The UNA EXPRESS-I launch last year was the first real-world test of the entire system end-to-end, Park said.

The CEO has spent his entire career working on rocket engines. Before founding Unastella, Park worked on combustion systems for Korea’s Nuri rocket — the country’s first indigenously developed orbital launch vehicle, built by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). He then moved to the German Aerospace Center in Berlin to work on European launch vehicle engines, and returned to Korea to join another rocket startup before deciding to build his own.

Unastella isn’t generating revenue yet, but investors appear to be backing the startup’s roadmap. Altos Ventures led the Series B, joined by Korea Development Bank, Strong Ventures, and Hana Ventures, among others.

UNA EXPRESS-II, targeted for later this year, is the launch Park is really building toward. Reaching 100 kilometers would mark a significant milestone, one he believes will open the door to partnerships with South Korea’s major aerospace and defense firms.

The 22-person startup has already laid the foundation and developed institutional relationships. Korea’s national space agency has flown components on UNA EXPRESS-I, and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute has transferred electric motor pump technology to the company.

Unastella is not alone in the race to tap into the global space launch market, which was worth roughly $15 billion in 2023. By 2030, it is projected to nearly triple to $41 billion, according to Grand View Research.

South Korea’s commercial launch sector is still in its early stages, but the field is already taking shape.

Hanwha Aerospace, the country’s largest defense conglomerate, took over the government-built Nuri rocket last year after acquiring full technology rights from KARI. Two startups are also competing: Innospace, which went public on the Korean stock exchange and has conducted a sub-orbital launch, and Perigee Aerospace, which is developing its Blue Whale rocket. None have yet achieved a commercial orbital launch. South Korea’s space agency KASA, established in 2024, has committed $266 million over seven years to build out launch infrastructure — a sign that the government is betting on the private sector to take the lead.

The competition extends well beyond Korea. In Asia, China leads the pack: Galactic Energy, LandSpace, and iSpace have all conducted multiple launches. Japan’s H3 rocket, developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi, completed its first successful launch in 2024, while startup Interstellar Technologies is building its own small vehicle. In Australia, Gilmour Space attempted its first orbital launch this year. And then there is Rocket Lab — founded in New Zealand, now listed on Nasdaq — which remains the only Asian-founded company to have built a commercially viable launch business.