LOCAL
The Los Angeles Times has a feature article on the Humboldt Bay, port, and future windfarm.
SCIENCE
[A new report on wildfire mitigation was issued April 7th by The California Wildfire Fund and is causing a stir in Sacramento. But here is the climate background that no one seems to want to confront:]
Wildfire activity is expected to increase substantially across most
regions by the end of the twenty-first century—particularly in terms of
burned area and season length—except in central Africa, where changes in
precipitation and land use may dampen future fire risk. A clear
poleward expansion of wildfire activity is projected, with high-latitude
regions showing emerging and heightened vulnerability. These ecosystems
are highly sensitive to warming, and even modest climatic shifts can
substantially alter wildfire behaviour…. Here we show that future wildfire exposure will substantially increase
for 9,592 non-marine species identified as threatened by increased fire
frequency and/or intensity. [G]lobal burned area is projected to increase by 9.3%, with 83.9% of
wildfire-vulnerable species exposed to higher risk.
GREENING
- Changan Automobile said it will begin trial installations before the end of Q3 2026. With an energy density of 400 Wh/kg, the company claims its “Golden Bell” all-solid-state battery can deliver over 1,500 km (932 miles) CLTC driving range. Chery, another leading Chinese car manufacturer, revealed its all-solid-state battery that can also achieve a range of over 1,500 km (932 miles) during its “Battery Night” event on Wednesday.
- California community choice aggregator Peninsula Clean Energy finds many homes can be electrified without expensive panel or other equipment upgrades, allowing customers with limited funding to realize cost savings and other benefits. (Canary Media)
- California community choice aggregator Marin Clean Energy prepares to launch an expanded virtual power plant program to “treat these distributed assets like power plants.” (Quitting Carbon)
- E-bikes are great, but there are still lots of questions about their use and regulation. In the meantime, the Associated Press has tips for how e-bike riders can protect themselves and people around them.
- One of California’s largest pension fund systems is gradually getting out of the oil and gas business, according to a new analysis. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s investments in the fossil fuel industry fell to 3 percent in 2025. It was 4.7 percent in 2022, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found.
The sell-off outpaces the fossil fuel industry’s overall contraction, reflecting a conscious shift at CalSTRS to move its holdings to low-carbon variants after opposing a 2022 legislative proposal mandating full divestment. - Climate Home News reported that 46 countries – including major oil producers – have confirmed they will attend the fossil-fuel phaseout summit being held in Colombia later this month.
- Battery energy storage systems provided a record 12.3 GW of power to California’s grid on March 29, or about 43% of total demand. (Fast Company)
- Declining faster than many terrestrial populations, 325 migratory freshwater fish species have been identified as candidates for urgent
conservation efforts by the United Nations’ Convention on the
Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). These
populations—critical for river health and economic output—have already
declined by over 80 percent since 1970.
This week, ambitious international safeguarding efforts will be unveiled at CMS’ 15th annual meeting, or COP15, in Campo Grande, Brazil,
marking a pivotal moment for a historically overlooked environmental
crisis. - Some 605 public, high-speed EV fueling stations switched on in the US during the first quarter, a 34% increase over the year-earlier period, according to Bloomberg News analysis of federal data. The country now has nearly 13,500 places to quickly add electrons to a car or truck, 25% more than it did a year ago.
- A Calgary company’s completion of a commercial geothermal project providing energy to 8,000 homes – and heating to 120,000 homes – in Geretsried, Germany, is being hailed as a breakthrough that could boost geothermal’s role in the global energy transition. As Victoria Foote writes, Eavor Technologies pulled off this coup by boring sealed pipes nearly 4.5 kilometres into the earth, connecting more than 300 kilometres of boreholes underground. Eavor says its technology can generate power almost anywhere, promising ubiquitous baseload clean power for the first time. Read more »
CLIMATE DESPOLIATION
- A peer-reviewed study published in Nature estimates that smoke from Canada’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season caused about 5,400 acute deaths and roughly 82,100 premature deaths globally. Researchers used multiple computer models and data sources to
assess the health impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from the
fires.
Key findings: 64,300 of the premature deaths occurred in North America and Europe, including 33,000 in the U.S. and 8,300 in Canada. - The Dutch Public Prosecution Service is considering a criminal investigation against RWE, one of the Netherlands’ largest energy providers. RWE faces allegations made by two forest advocacy groups that the company, which has collected billions of euros in Dutch biomass subsidies, misrepresented itself by claiming that hundreds of thousands of tons of wood pellets imported from Malaysia came entirely from sawmill waste, whereas those pellets actually come mostly from whole trees, contributing to Malaysian deforestation.
- Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions at the University of Leeds, has published new research showing just how powerful forests are at cooling the world around them. Tropical trees, he says, don’t just provide shade – they also “cool their surroundings by pumping water from the soil into the atmosphere – a process known as evapotranspiration.” The effect is huge. Spracklen notes that a single large tropical tree provides as much cooling as “several air conditioners running continuously”. But when forests are cleared, that cooling disappears. Spracklen and colleagues used satellite data to track how tropical deforestation has affected temperatures over the past 20 years. They found areas of tropical forest that were cut down warmed “more than three times” faster than nearby areas that remained intact.
- The annual increase in forest loss in Indonesia in 2025 was 66%, according to Indonesian biodiversity thinktank Auriga Nusantara, reported by Reuters.
- The Endangered Species Committee, a little-used panel of US senior federal agency leaders, on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from sweeping endangered species protections, citing reasons of national security. Dubbed the God Squad, the committee has the power to effectively condemn a species to extinction by revoking environmental protections. The group, which hadn’t met in more than 30 years, had only previously issued exemptions twice before and for specific projects that threatened specific species: in 1979 for whooping cranes in Wyoming and in 1992 for northern spotted owls in Oregon.
- An analysis projects that Woodside’s $18 billion liquefied natural gas facility under construction in Louisiana will produce substantially more greenhouse gas emissions than any LNG port that’s been built in the U.S. and dozens that have been proposed over the next decade. (Verite News)
- After the warmest winter on record for many states and a blistering March heat wave that left almost no snow in parts of the American West, the region is facing a summer of serious wildfire risks and a drought that could force broad water restrictions. New measurements this month show most of the Mountain West won’t be able to rely on melting snow, the region’s largest water source, because there’s hardly any snowpack there.
Scientists in many parts of the West found a snow drought this month unlike any they had seen. - Oil companies ExxonMobil, Empire Petroleum and their subsidiaries engaged in accounting fraud that could cost the state nearly $200 million, a lawsuit filed in New Mexico District Court alleges. If successful, plaintiffs say the case could change how old oil and gas assets are sold, leading to fewer orphan wells in the future. “Orphan” wells have no known or solvent owner, reporter Jerry Redfern writes. Beyond the potential cost to taxpayers, unplugged orphan wells can put people living nearby and the environment at risk by leaking natural gas, crude oil or other toxic chemicals onto the ground, into the air or into waterways.
DARK AGE CLIMATE POLITICS
- In the new white paper from UC Santa Barbara’s 2035 Initiative, three climate policy experts
analyzed PG&E’s public filings and the Department of Energy’s
evaluation of plant costs involved in extending the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear powerplant. They find that PG&E inflated costs when
it requested the state loan and is likely to come up $658.6 million
short in repaying it, which will be borne by taxpayers unless the
Legislature takes action.
They also find the additional fees
aren’t necessary. If
the fees were eliminated from 2027 to 2030, the authors find, it could
save California utility customers an estimated $1.84 billion. - Climate Superfund’ Law: The Justice Department and Vermont faced off in a federal courtroom over the state’s landmark 2024 law, which will require fossil fuel companies to pay for past costs of climate change. In the fall the Supreme Court will hear a case brought by oil companies seeking to ban these types of “pollluter pays” law suits. As of now only Vermont and New York have passed climate superfund laws.
- The upheaval of oil and gas supplies from the Middle East and subsequent price spikes in the U.S. and beyond reveal the consequences of relying heavily on fossil fuels, experts say. (The Guardian)
- Nevada utility NV Energy says forecasted data center-driven demand growth could hamper its ability to reach state-mandated clean energy targets by 2030. (Associated Press)
- Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes petitions regulators to reconsider their decision to end state renewable energy mandates, saying the utility commission had failed to complete the “legally required economic analysis.” (Canary Media)
- A federal judge rejects the Trump administration’s attempt to block California’s law barring oil and gas drilling near homes, schools, and hospitals, saying it is a reasonable environmental regulation. (Courthouse News)
- Founded in California 147 years ago, Chevron is expected to contribute nearly 13 times more in tax dollars to the Canadian government than the American Treasury for its 2025 operations. It’s set to pay 11 times as much to Australia, five times as much to Kazakhstan, and four times as much to Saudi Arabia and Nigeria each. In total, just 2% of the tax dollars Chevron is shelling out for 2025 are going to the U.S. government. That’s all according to a new analysis.
- The U.S. Interior Department quietly failed to appeal a court decision that allowed work to restart on offshore wind projects halted by the administration, an omission that could be an early sign of hope for the industry, experts say. (Grist)
- Wind and solar developers have been held up for nearly a year because of the shutdown of a federal government website that helps identify endangered species in a project area. (E&E News)
- California community solar groups are mourning after a proposed decision on Tuesday by the California Public Utilities Commission to keep community solar mostly in the hands of electric utilities.
- Alaska tribal nations and advocacy groups join a lawsuit challenging the U.S. EPA’s move to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding and eliminate vehicle emissions standards, saying climate change poses an “existential threat” to the state’s communities and tribes. (E&E News)
- War in Iran has cost the U.S. roughly $17 billion in increased gasoline and diesel prices so far, racking up an extra $129 in charges to the average household. (Heatmap)
Take Action!
Green America is calling out Walmart for its continued leaking of HFC refrigerants (hundreds of times more warming than CO2). You can be part of the petition by clicking here.