Efficiency and Renewable Energy News

1/29/2026

2026 Doomsday Clock Statement: Climate Change
A troubling climate outlook.  Record-breaking climate trends continued in 2024 and 2025. Globally averaged temperature in 2024 was at the warmest level in 175 years of record-keeping. Likewise, atmospheric carbon dioxide—the greenhouse gas most responsible for human-caused climate change—reached a new high of 152 percent of 1750 levels. The oceans continue to absorb about 90 percent of the heat added by climate change, and globally averaged sea surface temperatures are the warmest in the modern satellite and buoy record. The Conejeres Glacier in Colombia was declared extinct, and all glaciers in Venezuela have joined a long list of glaciers that are endangered or have disappeared. With the addition of freshwater from melting glaciers and thermal expansion, global averaged sea level rise reached the highest level in the satellite record of sea level, which began in 1993.  The hydrologic cycle, energized by the warm temperatures, became erratic, with deluges and droughts hopscotching around the globe. Large swaths of Peru, the Amazon, southern Africa, and northwest Africa experienced droughts, while the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southeast Brazil received record rainfall, and extensive floods occurred in Congo River Basin. Parts of Asia and Central Europe were also wetter than normal while Canada experienced both its hottest and driest year on record. “An estimated 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water at least one month per year and this is expected to increase to more than 5 billion by 2050,” according to the UN, and the world is falling far short of the UN Sustainable Development Goal set for water and sanitation.

 

US leads record global surge in gas-fired power driven by AI demands, with big costs for the climate
Projects in development expected to grow global capacity by nearly 50% amid growing concern over impact on planet. The US is leading a huge global surge in new gas-fired power generation that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions, with this record boom driven by the expansion of energy-hungry datacenters to service artificial intelligence, according to a new forecast.  This year is set to shatter the annual record for new gas power additions around the world, with projects in development expected to grow existing global gas capacity by nearly 50%, a report by Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found.  The US is at the forefront of a global push for gas that is set to escalate over the next five years, after tripling its planned gas-fired capacity in 2025. Much of this new capacity will be devoted to the vast electricity needs of AI, with a third of the 252 gigawatts of gas power in development set to be situated on site at datacenters.  All of this new gas energy is set to come at a significant cost to the climate, amid ongoing warnings from scientists that fossil fuels must be rapidly phased out to avoid disastrous global heating.

 

1/26/2026

Trump says the big US winter storm is proof of climate hoax – here’s why he’s wrong
Donald Trump has erroneously cited an enormous winter storm that is set to deliver freezing temperatures and heavy snow to half of the US as supposed proof that the world is not heating up due to the burning of fossil fuels.  Trump, who has repeatedly questioned and mocked established climate science in the past, posted of the storm on Truth Social: “Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain – WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”  The winter storm will surge from the Rockies across the midwest and southern US on Friday, ending up on the east coast over the weekend. At least 230 million people are expected to be affected in some way by the storm with roads set to become dangerously icy and power blackouts expected in multiple locations.  This storm is being caused by a mass of frigid air from the Arctic hitting warmer, moister air in the US. Colder Arctic air is usually confined to the far northern latitudes by the polar vortex, a vast circular ribbon of wind. When the polar vortex weakens or stretches out, the freezing Arctic air can spill out south into the US, a bit like when you open the front door on a very cold day. This is what is happening now.

US cutting or revising nearly $84 billion in energy loans
WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Thursday it is restructuring or eliminating nearly $84 billion in clean energy projects funded during the administration of former President Joe Biden.
The move was the latest by President Donald Trump’s administration to favor fossil fuels and nuclear energy while eliminating subsidies for alternative energy like wind and solar.  The changes by the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, or EDF, come after a review of $104 billion in loans made during the Biden administration with the majority of that coming after the 2024 presidential election. The office was known then as the Loan Programs Office.  The Trump administration has canceled or is in the process of terminating nearly $30 billion in loan obligations, the department said. The cancellations include, for example, one from last year of $4.9 billion for the Grain Belt Express transmission project to send power from wind and solar energy projects to cities in the Midwest and East.  The Trump administration has eliminated about $9.5 billion in loans to wind and solar projects and where possible has replaced those by supporting new capacity at natural gas and nuclear power plants, the department said.  The department is also revising another $53.6 billion in loans.

1/22/2026
Stretched polar vortex, moisture and a lack of sea ice all to blame for dangerous winter blast, meteorologists say 
WASHINGTON (AP) — Warm Arctic waters and cold continental land are combining to stretch the dreaded polar vortex in a way that will send much of the United States a devastating dose of winter weather later this week with swaths of painful subzero temperatures, heavy snow and powerline-toppling ice.  Meteorologists said the eastern two-thirds of the nation is threatened with a winter storm that could rival the damage of a major hurricane and has some origins in an Arctic that is warming from climate change. They warn that the frigid weather is likely to stick around through the rest of January and into early February, meaning the snow and ice that accumulates will take a long time to melt.  Forecasts have the storm, expected to hit starting Friday, stretching from New Mexico to New England and across the Deep South. About 230 million people face temperatures of 20 degrees (-7 degrees Celsius) or colder and around 150 million are likely to be hit by snow and ice, with many Americans getting both, according to the National Weather Service.

 

1/12/2026
Trump’s climate war could cost America a generation, if we let it
The year 2025 began with President Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement — the opening salvo in what would become a concerted campaign to dismantle the nation’s ability to combat climate change. From there, the Trump administration moved aggressively to gut key emissions standards for power plants and vehicles; suspend offshore wind projects; open millions of acres of protected land for fossil fuel extraction; extend the life of dirty coal plants; and reverse key Inflation Reduction Act initiatives. By November, the value of clean energy project cancellations stood at $32 billion, and the number of clean energy jobs lost at 40,000.  These policy reversals will set back the clean energy transition and lock in fossil fuels for years, but this White House’s most enduring damage will be the destruction of the scientific infrastructure that has enabled our understanding of climate change and informed our policies to combat it. Through the disruption of research programs, shuttering of agencies and institutions, mass firings of experts, and elimination of career paths, the Trump administration is undermining climate science in ways that will hobble American competitiveness for generations.  In effect, the United States is now dismantling its own capacity to address climate change, while ceding leadership in the clean energy economy to competitors like China. More than 3,800 research grants were abruptly terminated in 2025, pulling $3 billion in active research funding from the U.S. scientific enterprise. Each canceled grant represents years of painstaking work abandoned, research teams left without salaries, and important breakthrough discoveries that may now never happen. 

1/8/2026
China’s ‘artificial sun’ breaks nuclear fusion limit thought to be impossible 
Scientists in China have made a breakthrough with fusion energy that could finally overcome one of the most stubborn barriers to realising the next-generation energy source.  A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said its experimental nuclear reactor, dubbed the ‘artificial Sun’, achieved a plasma density that was previously thought impossible.  Nuclear fusion holds the potential to produce near-limitless energy without leaving behind hazardous waste, with some heralding it the “holy grail” of clean energy. It mimics the same natural reactions that occur within the Sun, though it has proved immensely difficult to achieve it at scale.  There have been several major breakthroughs in recent years, including milestones achieved at CAS’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST).  Last year, CAS successfully ran its artificial Sun reactor for more than 1,000 seconds for the first time –a record that was subsequently broken by France’s WEST machine.  Both experiments were limited by the theoretical ceiling on density, known as the Greenwald Limit, which causes fuel – or plasma – to become unstable at a certain level. Through a new process called plasma-wall self organisation, the CAS researchers were able to keep the plasma stable at unprecedented density levels.

 

1/6/2026
Canada has just broken a world record in nuclear fusion, and the number of neutrons has put the entire energy industry on alert
Canada has quietly set a new mark in the global race for fusion power. General Fusion says its latest compression experiments produced about 600 million fusion neutrons every second at peak, a record for its magnetized target fusion approach and a clear step toward controlled nuclear fusion.  In simple terms, the company has shown that it can squeeze a ball of super-hot gas hard enough and cleanly enough for fusion reactions to light up in a predictable way. The results come from the long-running Plasma Compression Science experiment series, whose data have been reviewed by independent scientists and published in the journal Nuclear Fusion. In fusion research, neutron output is one of the main scoreboards, since neutrons carry much of the reaction energy and prove that true fusion is happening. In these experiments, the team achieved a peak rate near 600 million fusion neutrons per second in a single compression shot, a figure that Canadian Nuclear Society leaders describe as a record for magnetized target fusion and an important validation of the concept.  Equally important is how the plasma behaved under stress. During compression, its density rose to about 190 times the starting value and the magnetic field that holds it in place grew more than 13 times stronger, while the plasma stayed stable instead of tearing itself apart and delivered repeatable bursts of fusion neutrons. Mike Donaldson, Senior Vice President for Technology Development at General Fusion, said the team has “demonstrated the viability of a stable fusion process” and laid the foundation for its LM26 project.

1/5/2026
It is not the Earth’s future at stake in the climate crisis – it is ours
As we edge closer to an irreversible point, the climate is becoming less a “challenge to manage” and more a hostile environment in which many will struggle to live. The planet is already adapting to its future. The question is whether we will do the same.  The problem is not simply technical or financial; it is profoundly moral. The world is divided into three groups: those in need, who are already suffering and losing homes and livelihoods; those driven by greed, who profit from delay and denial; and those who claim to care, but hide behind endless excuses for inaction. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking.  Poorer nations, which did least to create this crisis, are being asked to pay the highest price. Wealthy nations debate costs and political convenience while lives are being lost and futures erased. That is not policy failure; it is injustice.  Adaptation funding is not charity. Emissions cuts are not optional. Honesty, courage and compassion are now survival tools. Anything less is betrayal.

 

12/22/2025
Without big changes, this is what the environment will look like in 2050 
Oppressive heat. Species extinctions. Pollution-choked skies.  This is the future that awaits the world unless humanity takes dramatic steps to end a series of mushrooming environmental crises, finds a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).  The seventh edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7) offers a stark vision of the decades to come. But its authors say the worst forecasts can still be avoided if countries quickly take meaningful steps to address climate change, nature, land and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.  “With a whole-of-government, whole-of-society effort humanity can still turn the ship around,” says Maarten Kappelle, Chief of Service in UNEP’s Office of Science. “But if countries continue to drag their collective feet, billions of people will face an uncertain future, especially those in the developing world.”  GEO-7, the work of nearly 300 scientists, created a model of what the planet would look like in 2050 if nations continued to do three environmentally destructive things: pollute, pump out greenhouse gasses and destroy natural spaces. In the first of three stories about the report, here are some of the key findings of that modelling.

 

12/11/2025
Fusion isn’t here — but leading startup is making construction progress  
Commonwealth Fusion CEO Bob Mumgaard often discusses the technical complexities of fusion — but increasingly he’s talking about building the sites to make it happen.  Commonwealth is one of the preeminent companies in the decades-long effort to harness the energy that powers the sun.  It recently partnered with Google DeepMind on using AI to speed fusion’s development as a clean energy source.  “Historically, fusion has really been just only about the science of fusion, and that’s gone very well,” Mumgaard told Axios during a D.C. visit this week. “But now it’s ready to be about building facilities.”  An initial site west of Boston — intended to show that fusion is commercially viable — is roughly three-quarters finished.  He said recent tariffs forced the company to adjust plans on acquiring supply-chain components, but that all has gone smoothly.  The company also is building what could be the world’s first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant in Virginia’s Chesterfield County. Google already has signed a power purchase deal.  The company received a county planning commission’s approval in August, and about 10% of the work has been completed. Commonwealth hopes it can start operating in the early 2030s.  Another fusion company, Helion, also has broken ground on its project in Washington state.

 

11/24/2025
China accelerates efforts towards nuclear fusion with global research program
China launched an international science program on fusion burning plasma and released the research plan for its compact fusion experiment device – Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak (BEST) – in east China’s Anhui Province on Monday, marking a significant step in the pursuit of “artificial sun” technology.  Nuclear fusion energy, which simulates the fusion reaction of the sun to release energy, has been hailed as the ultimate clean energy source. Over the past decades, scientists worldwide have explored various technological routes, including magnetic confinement, to achieve the highly demanding conditions required for sustained fusion reactions.  With the development of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor program and devices such as BEST, “we are entering a new phase of fusion research – burning plasma,” said Song Yuntao, vice president of the Hefei Institute of Physical Science under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  “This is a key step in fusion engineering research, where, like fire, the reaction itself generates enough heat to sustain the process, laying the foundation for future continuous power generation,” Song noted.  China’s fusion research has accelerated in recent years, with multiple world records broken. The BEST device, China’s next-generation “artificial sun,” will play a crucial role in this endeavor.

11/16/2025

China finds bigger role as US sidesteps Brazil climate summit
BELEM, Brazil, Nov 15 (Reuters) – With the United States absent from the U.N. annual international climate summit for the first time in three decades, China is stepping into the limelight as a leader in the fight against global warming.  Its country pavilion dominates the entrance hall of the sprawling COP30 conference grounds in Brazil’s Amazon city of Belem, executives from its biggest clean energy companies are presenting their visions for a green future to large audiences in English, and its diplomats are working behind the scenes to ensure constructive talks.  Those were Washington’s roles, but they now reside with Beijing.  “Water flows to where there is space, and diplomacy often does the same,” Francesco La Camera, director general at the International Renewable Energy Agency, told Reuters.  He said China’s dominance in renewable energy and electric vehicles was bolstering its position in climate diplomacy.  China’s transformation from a quiet presence at the U.N.’s Conference of the Parties summits to a more central player seeking the world’s attention reflects a shift in the fight against global warming since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to office.

11/10/2025

Countries are gathering for climate negotiations. Here’s where the U.S. stands
Most of the world’s nations are gathering in Brazil’s northern city of Belém to negotiate the ongoing response to climate change. The United Nations annual climate summit, called COP30, begins Monday and is expected to last about two weeks.  This year, the U.S. will not play an active role in the talks. According to a White House statement to NPR, no high-level officials will attend COP30 — breaking a long-standing tradition.  During the previous Trump administration, U.S. delegates participated in the talks. Now, the administration has taken a stronger anti-climate stance, calling efforts to limit global warming a “hoax.”

10/17/2025

UN sees the world entering ‘extremely dangerous’ climate era as CO2 spikes by the most in the history of human civilization
The World Meteorological Organization said in its latest bulletin on greenhouse gases, an annual study released ahead of the UN’s annual climate conference, that CO2 growth rates have now tripled since the 1960s, and reached levels not seen in at least 800,000 years.  Emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas, alongside more wildfires, have helped fan a “vicious climate cycle,” and people and industries continue to spew heat-trapping gases while the planet’s oceans and forests lose their ability to absorb them, the WMO report said.  The Geneva-based agency said the increase in the global average concentration of carbon dioxide from 2023 to 2024 amounted to the highest annual level of any one-year span since measurements began in 1957. Growth rates of CO2 have accelerated from an annual average increase of 2.4 parts per million per year in the decade from 2011 to 2020, to 3.5 ppm from 2023 to 2024, WMO said.  Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare called the new data “alarming and worrying.”

10/15/2025

Coral die-off marks Earth’s first climate ‘tipping point’, scientists
Surging temperatures worldwide have pushed coral reef ecosystems into a state of widespread decline, marking the first time the planet has reached a climate ‘tipping point’, researchers announced today. They also say that without rapid action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, other systems on Earth will also soon reach planetary tipping points, thresholds for profound changes that cannot be rolled back. “We can no longer talk about tipping points as a future risk,” says Steve Smith, a social scientist at the University of Exeter, UK, and a lead author on a report released today about how close Earth is to reaching roughly 20 planetary tipping points. “This is our new reality.” Led by Smith and other scientists at the University of Exeter, the report assesses the risk of breaching tipping points such as ice-sheet collapse, rising seas and dieback of the Amazon rainforest. It also discusses progress towards various positive tipping points focused on social and economic change, such as the adoption of clean energy.

9/30/2025

Climate change is eroding our quality of life, and Trump is making it worse
More than 30 years ago, the U.S. became the first industrialized country to ratify the world’s first climate treaty. Since then, Congress has done little to honor that commitment.  Now, climate change is not just an environmental issue — it has become a quality-of-life issue affecting every American city and family.  Climate impacts are most obvious as communities turn to ash, houses float away on swollen rivers, tornadoes reduce neighborhoods to rubble, and the air gets so hot that we risk our lives by going outside. More than 4 million Americans were displaced from their homes by weather disasters last year. Four in 10 people live in counties hit by one or more weather disasters during the last two months. More than one in four homes, worth nearly $13 trillion, are at serious or extreme risk of weather disasters.  However, global warming is also driving up inflation, healthcare costs, food prices and insurance rates.  Polls show that 70 percent of Americans now believe climate change is a serious problem, 64 percent support the development of clean energy, and 52 percent consider global warming a top priority for the president and Congress. Yet, the president still insists that climate change is a hoax. 

9/25/2025

Trump calls climate change policy ‘greatest con job ever perpetrated’, faults it for West’s decline
WASHINGTON — President Trump argued Tuesday that policies meant to mitigate the effect of climate change are all just a bunch of hot air, calling them “the greatest con job ever perpetrated” in scathing remarks to the United Nations General Assembly.  “You know, it used to be global cooling. If you look back in the 1920s and 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world,” Trump riffed during his wide-ranging speech. “Then they said global warming will kill the world.”  “Now they can just call it climate change, because that way they can’t miss,” he vented. “Climate change — because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, is climate change. “It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”  Trump went on to argue that ominous predictions about the Earth’s temperature rising to dangerous levels due to fossil fuel emissions have been wildly overstated.  “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes,” Trump groused without naming specific examples.

Fact-checking what Trump said about climate change during the UN General Assembly
ABC News’ Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee fact checks President Donald Trump’s claims on climate change and renewable energy being “too expensive” from his United Nations speech on Tuesday.  President Donald Trump spent a considerable amount of his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday disparaging renewable energy sources and challenging the scientific consensus on climate change.  Among the president’s remarks were unsubstantiated claims about climate change, renewable energy sources and the environment.  Trump claimed that clean energy sources, such as solar and wind, don’t work and are more expensive than fossil fuel options. He also said the U.N. was incorrect in its predictions about the consequences of climate change. And the president repeatedly warned that the economics of renewable energy are harming the economy and resulting in higher energy costs.  The president explained that he withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, which he called a “scam,” because the U.S. wasn’t being treated fairly and that other countries had different expectations. He added that the “United States has been taken advantage of by the world for many, many years, but not any longer.”  The ABC News weather, climate and science unit fact-checked some of the energy and climate claims the president made during his U.N. speech.

9/15/2025

US environment agency could end reporting of greenhouse gas emissions
The US Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Friday a rule to end a mandatory program requiring 8,000 facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions – an effort the agency said was burdensome to business, but which leaves the public without transparency around the environmental impact of those sources.  The agency said mandatory collection of GHG emissions data was unnecessary because it is “not directly related to a potential regulation and has no material impact on improving human health and the environment”.  “The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” said Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator.  The rule responds to a day-one executive order issued by Donald Trump aimed at removing barriers to unleashing more US energy, particularly fossil fuels. It is the latest in a series of major regulatory rollbacks undoing previous US efforts to combat climate crisis.

9/8/2025

A Resounding Rejection of the US DOE’s Sham “Climate Science” Report
The comment period for a sham “climate science” report commissioned by the US Department of Energy closed earlier this week and the verdict is in: the scientific community has overwhelmingly and resoundingly rejected the report. In addition to its deeply flawed content, which is rife with inaccuracies and disinformation aimed at downplaying the risks of climate change, many have also called out the shoddy, secretive, and potentially unlawful process used to draft it.

8/21/2025

Trump revives attacks on renewable energy as solar surges
ENERGYWIRE | President Donald Trump renewed his verbal attacks on renewables Wednesday as federal data showed that solar power is on track to provide more than half of installations to the U.S. grid this year.  On Truth Social, Trump said the U.S. would not approve wind or “farmer destroying” solar. The comments followed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ Monday announcement that the department would rescind “all programs building solar panels on our farmland.”  Trump alleged that wind and solar are driving increases in electricity prices, which he called the “SCAM OF THE CENTURY!”  “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” the president wrote.  The comments prompted a sharp response from the Solar Energy Industries Association, which said on X that the “real scam is blaming solar for fossil fuel price spikes.”  “Farmers, families, and businesses choose solar to save money, preserve land, and escape high costs of the old, dirty fuels being forced on them by this administration,” the group said.

8/18/2025

Environmental Groups Sue Over D.O.E. Report Downplaying Climate Change
A new lawsuit in federal court alleges that the Trump administration violated the law by secretly recruiting a group of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to write a report downplaying global warming.  The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, both environmental groups, accused the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency of “flagrant violations” of a law that governs advisory committees.  The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Tuesday. It alleges that in March Chris Wright, the energy secretary, “quietly arranged for five handpicked skeptics of the effects of climate change” to form a committee called the Climate Working Group that then wrote a report downplaying the threat of rising greenhouse gas emissions. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.  But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow federal agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups when engaging in policymaking, according to the lawsuit. The law requires that any groups developed to advise federal policy must be disclosed and that meetings, emails and other records be made public.

8/1/2025

World’s first nuclear fusion plant being built in US to power Microsoft data centers
A Washington-based company has started the construction of a nuclear fusion facility in Chelan County, Orion. Helion Energy aims to produce low-cost, clean electric energy using a fuel derived from water.  The plan is to produce electricity from fusion by 2028 and supply the power to Microsoft data centers.  “Today is an important day – not just for Helion, but for the entire fusion industry – as we unleash a new era of energy independence and industrial renewal,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s co-founder and CEO.  “Since we founded the company, we have been completely focused on preparing fusion technology for commercialization and getting electrons on the grid. Starting site work brings us one step closer to that vision.”  The energy company, focused on generating zero-carbon electricity, choose the Chelan County site for its ready access to transmission and legacy of energy innovation.  Called Orion, the project is expected to connect to Washington’s primary power delivery networks, allowing it to connect to the same grid just upstream of the Microsoft data centers.  

7/29/2025

Trump Environmental Protection Agency moves to repeal finding that allows climate regulation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.  The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule rescinds a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.  The “endangerment finding” is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.  EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the proposed rule change on a podcast ahead of an official announcement set for Tuesday in Indiana.  Repealing the endangerment finding “will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America,” Zeldin said on the Ruthless podcast.

7/22/2025

World on brink of climate breakthrough as fossil fuels ‘run out of road’, UN chief says 
The world is on the brink of a breakthrough in the climate fight and fossil fuels are running out of road, the UN chief said on Tuesday, as he urged countries to funnel support into low-carbon energy.  More than nine in 10 renewable power projects globally are now cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. Solar power is about 41% cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative, and onshore wind generation is less than half the price of fossil fuels, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency.  Costs have been driven down by the increasingly widespread use of the technologies, a huge focus on low-carbon manufacturing in China, and burgeoning investment in the sector, reaching $2tn last year – which was $800bn more than went into fossil fuels, and an increase of 70% in the last decade.

7/17/2025

Trump’s $1tn for Pentagon to add huge planet-heating emissions, study shows
Trump’s 2026 budget legislation slashes federal funding for science, education, Medicaid, food stamps, emergency management, the National Weather Service and humanitarian aid – in order to pay for the military expansion, tax cuts for the wealthy, and Trump’s violent immigration crackdown. Trump has also withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accords for the second time, and rolled back Biden-era investments in renewable energies such as solar and wind that are key to weaning the US off fossil fuels in order to curtail climate catastrophe.  The US is the largest historical contributor to the climate crisis, and currently the second worst emitter after China – a country with quadruple the population.

7/5/2025

As the World Warms, Extreme Rain Is Becoming Even More Extreme
Even in places, like Central Texas, with a long history of floods, human-caused warming is creating the conditions for more frequent and severe deluges. In parts of Texas that were flooded on Friday, the quantities of rain that poured down in a six-hour stretch were so great that they had less than a tenth of 1 percent chance of falling there in any given year, according to data analyzed by Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.  The Guadalupe River rose from three feet to 34 feet in about 90 minutes, according to data from a river gauge near the town of Comfort, Texas. The volume of water exploded from 95 cubic feet per second to 166,000 cubic feet per second.  And the warming climate is creating the conditions in Texas for more of these sharp, deadly deluges.

7/3/2025

“Google Bets Billions on Fusion Breakthrough”: This Secretive Deal Could Power the Entire U.S. for Centuries
Massachusetts-based energy startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems has announced a groundbreaking partnership with Google to provide 200 megawatts of electricity from its future ARC power plant, marking a significant step toward realizing the potential of fusion energy as a clean and sustainable power source.  In the realm of renewable energy, one of the most ambitious and promising ventures is the development of fusion power. Recently, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a Massachusetts-based energy startup, announced a groundbreaking partnership with Google. This collaboration aims to supply 200 megawatts of electricity from its future ARC power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. As the world grapples with the urgent need for sustainable energy solutions, this partnership could herald a new era of clean energy.  Commonwealth Fusion Systems has set its sights on a bold vision: to transform the energy landscape by harnessing the power of nuclear fusion. Founded in 2018, CFS has already raised over $2 billion in funding, demonstrating significant investor confidence. At the heart of their strategy is the SPARC reactor, currently under construction in Devens, Massachusetts. This prototype aims to achieve what’s known as net energy gain or Q>1, where the reactor produces more energy than it consumes.

7/2/2025

The White House took down the nation’s top climate report. You can still find it here
The website that hosts the most recent edition of the National Climate Assessment has gone dark. The sprawling report is the most influential source of information about how climate change affects the United States.  The National Climate Assessment is widely used by teachers, city planners, farmers, judges and regular citizens looking for answers to common questions such as how quickly sea levels are rising near American cities and how to deal with wildfire smoke exposure. The most recent edition had a searchable atlas that allowed anyone to learn about the current and future effects of global warming in their specific town or state.  On Monday, the government website that hosts all of that information stopped working.  The Trump administration had already halted work on the next edition of the report, and fired all the staff who worked on it.  The White House did not respond to questions about why the climate report website was taken down, or whether the administration plans to create the next edition of the climate assessment as Congress mandates.  Congress requires the federal government to publish the National Climate Assessment every four years. The last edition was published in 2023, and underscored the degree to which climate change is expensive, deadly and preventable.

7/1/2025

‘Climate is our biggest war’, warns CEO of Cop30 ahead of UN summit in Brazil
“Climate is our biggest war. Climate is here for the next 100 years. We need to focus and … not allow those [other] wars to take our attention away from the bigger fight that we need to have.”  Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, the UN climate summit to be held in Brazil this November, is worried. With only four months before the crucial global summit, the world’s response to the climate crisis is in limbo.  Fewer than 30 of the 200 countries that will gather in the Amazonian city of Belém have drafted plans, required by the 2015 Paris agreement, to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown.  And that crisis is escalating. In the last two years, for the first time, global land temperatures soared to more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – breaching the limit that governments have promised at multiple climate meetings to keep.  Meanwhile, the US president, Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris agreement and is intent on expanding fossil fuels and dismantling carbon-cutting efforts. The EU is mired in tense arguments over its plans. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is rumored to be considering weak targets that would condemn the world to much greater heating.

6/6/2025

Earth’s atmosphere hasn’t had this much CO2 in millions of years
Earth’s atmosphere now has more carbon dioxide in it than it has in millions — and possibly tens of millions — of years, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the University of California San Diego.  For the first time, global average concentrations of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas emitted as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, exceeded 430 parts per million (ppm) in May. The new readings were a record high and represented an increase of more than 3 ppm over last year.  The measurements indicate that countries are not doing enough to limit greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the steady buildup of C02, which climate scientists point to as the main culprit for global warming.  Carbon dioxide, like other greenhouse gases, traps heat from the sun and can remain in the atmosphere for centuries. As such, high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contribute to higher global temperatures and other negative consequences of climate change, including rising sea levels, melting polar ice, and more frequent and severe extreme weather events.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen sharply since preindustrial times, owing mostly to human activities that pump greenhouse gases into the air.

Nuclear fusion record smashed as German scientists take ‘a significant step forward’ to near-limitless clean energy
A recently concluded experimental campaign at the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany has smashed previous fusion records and set a new benchmark for reactor performances.  Nuclear fusion offers a tantalizing promise of unlimited clean energy. By smashing together isotopes (or different versions) of hydrogen at incredibly high temperatures, the resulting superheated plasma of electrons and ions fuses into heavier atoms, releasing a phenomenal amount of energy in the process.  However, while this fusion reaction is self-sustaining under the extraordinary temperatures and pressures within stars, recreating these conditions on Earth is a huge technical challenge — and current reactor concepts still consume more energy than they are able to produce.  Stellarators are one of the most promising reactor designs, so named for their mimicry of reactions in the sun. They use powerful external magnets to control the high-energy plasma within a ring-shaped vacuum chamber and maintain a stable, high pressure. Unlike simpler tokamak reactors — which pass a high current through the plasma to generate the required magnetic field — stellarators’ external magnets are better at stabilizing the plasma through the fusion reactions, a feature that will ultimately be necessary when translating the technology to commercial power plants.

5/22/2025

5/20/2025

The world’s ice sheets just got a dire prognosis, and coastlines are going to pay the price
The world’s ice sheets are on course for runaway melting, leading to multiple feet of sea level rise and “catastrophic” migration away from coastlines, even if the world pulls off the miraculous and keeps global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to new research.  A group of international scientists set out to establish what a “safe limit” of warming would be for the survival of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. They pored over studies that took data from satellites, climate models and evidence from the past, from things like ice cores, deep-sea sediments and even octopus DNA.  What they found painteda dire picture.  The world has pledged to restrict global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.  However, not only is this limit speeding out of reach — the world is currently on track for up to 2.9 degrees of warming by 2100. But the most alarming finding of the study, published Tuesday in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, is that 1.5 might not even be good enough to save the ice sheets.

5/9/2025

Two-thirds of global warming caused by world’s richest 10%, study finds
The wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s people are responsible for two-thirds of the global warming since 1990, according to researchers.  The way in which the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of heatwaves and droughts, wrote the researchers of a study published on Wednesday in the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Climate Change.  This is the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events.  “We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts,” lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at the public university of ETH Zurich, told the AFP news agency. “It’s a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability.”  Compared with the global average, for example, the richest 1 percent contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the study.  Emissions from the wealthiest 10 percent in China and the United States – which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution – each led to a two- to threefold rise in heat extremes.

5/5/2025

Scientific societies to do climate assessment after Trump administration dismissed authors
Two major US scientific societies have announced they will join forces to produce peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis’s impact days after Donald Trump’s administration dismissed contributors to a key Congress-mandated report on climate crisis preparedness.  On Friday, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) said that they will work together to produce over 29 peer-reviewed journals that will cover all aspects of climate change including observations, projections, impacts, risks and solutions.  The collaboration comes just days after Trump’s administration dismissed all contributors to the sixth National Climate Assessment, the US government’s flagship study on climate change. The dismissal of nearly 400 contributors had left the future of the study in question; it had been scheduled for publication in 2028.  The NCA had been overseen by the Nasa-supported Global Change Research Program – a key US climate body which the Trump administration also dismissed last month. The reports, which have been published since 2000, coordinated input from 14 federal agencies and hundreds of external scientists.

4/29/2025

White House dismisses authors of major climate report
The Trump Administration has dismissed the scientists working on the country’s flagship climate report, a move that threatens to curtail climate science and make information about global warming less available to the public.  The National Climate Assessment is the most trustworthy and comprehensive source of information about how global warming affects the United States. It answers common questions about how quickly sea levels are rising near American cities, how much rain is normal for different regions and how to deal with wildfire smoke exposure.  The assessment is mandated by Congress, and its sixth edition was supposed to be released in late 2027. About 400 volunteer authors had already started work. They included top scientists as well as economists, tribal leaders and climate experts from non-profit groups and corporations.

4/25/2025