The US may be hitting a tipping point for heat pumps. In the first quarter of this year, heat pump sales beat fossil fuel furnaces by 32 percent. See what makes the appliance so powerful HERE.
South Korea is moving in to try its hand at green hydrogen fuel production. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the country’s state-owned nuclear giant, said it will launch a pilot program to produce hydrogen using heat and electricity from reactors, Hydrogen Insight reported last week.
Romania, whose coastline makes up a single-digit percentage of its mostly landlocked borders, is the latest country to make big plans for sea-based wind turbines. Bucharest is now targeting nearly 12 gigawatts of offshore wind, Renewables Now reported.
University of Nevada Las Vegas researchers develop a solar-powered household filtration and distillation unit to treat and reuse graywater in rural communities. (Fox 5)
Walmart has become a major player in the burgeoning business of quickly fueling electric vehicles, speeding past Costco as well as more established charging companies with its in-house network of electron pumps. As of March of last year, every EV station at a Walmart is under the company brand. While the blitz of infrastructure will fuel in-store sales, it will also redraw the American charging map, making public electrons cheaper and easier to find.
Data show utility-scale and rooftop solar installations produced 51% of California’s electricity in May, making it the world’s first major economy to cross the 50% threshold. (Canary Media)
CLIMATE DESPOLIATION
The probability that a single monthly global temperature average in early 2027 passes 2C has reached 35% to 40%, said Ben Kirtman, dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at Miami. “That’s a large probability,” he said. “That’s really large, and maybe that’s what people don’t appreciate.” The earliest suggestion that 2C might be a reasonable upper limit for manageable climate change goes back to the mid-1970s. Four decades later, nearly 200 countries agreed in Paris to set it as their goal to limit climate change — while striving to keep heating below 1.5C as a long-term average of 20 years or so. The world may eclipse that stretch goal by the end of this decade, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Firefighters in Spain and France were racing against the clock on Tuesday to keep ferocious wildfires near Madrid and Bordeaux in check before a scorching heat wave hits the area, which could worsen the largest blazes the countries have faced in their modern history. Temperatures in some areas are expected to reach 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Celsius, later this week. The fires have consumed scores of houses, caused the evacuation of over 300,000 people, and burned hundreds of thousands of acres of land in both countries, highlighting the challenge faced by Europe as summers grow increasingly hot and wildfires become more widespread. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called the fires in the region “the most painful expression of a climate emergency” and has urged the government to better plan for global warming impacts.“ This climate emergency is exceeding every threshold and scale that scientists have long warned all of Spain and Europe about.” Read more.
The latest heat wave roasting Europe is warming up rivers and drying the watercourses on which the continent’s energy systems rely. In Eastern Europe, the mighty Danube has hit record lows, beaching boats in Croatia, squeezing out a quarter of Serbia’s fuel shipments, and forcing Hungary’s only nuclear power station to shut down as cooling water disappeared.
New results on the dangers of cooking with gas. Prof Ash Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University, the project’s leader, said: “We were surprised when we analysed the results and found a very large effect size. The improvements in asthma symptoms following stove change were similar to – or even greater than – those reported in clinical trials of commonly used asthma medications.”
DARK AGE CLIMATE POLITICS
U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) adds an amendment to a House defense bill that would allow the federal government to seize land along Sable Offshore’s contested oil pipeline in California in an effort to avoid state regulations. (E&E News)
Faced with an insurance sector buckling under rising costs from extreme weather damage, Florida made it harder for consumers to sue for low payouts. It’s a change that other states are now looking to replicate with similar rules, even as homeowners lose out. $36 billion is the inflation adjusted, five-year average cost of severe storms, flooding and tropical cyclones in Florida, according to data from Climate Central.
The Trump administration admits in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy for 16 states solely because those states voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. (Associated Press)
Pacific Gas and Electric now counts 12.7 GW in its data center pipeline, of which 490 MW of projects have executed interconnection agreements and another 3.9 GW are in final engineering. [A GW is enough to power New Orleans.] Other interesting facts include a PG&E 5 year capital expenditure plan of 73 billion. [Which rate payers will pay for.]
Media: In 2025 alone, climate coverage around the world shrank by 14%. While this is a huge loss, it is also imperceptible when climate has so little visibility to begin with — a study found that over the last four decades climate issues made up 0.55% of all news coverage in the United States.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that power plants that do not connect to the grid would not have to comply with the Clean Air Act’s Acid Rain Program, which regulates power plants’ sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions. An EPA Assistant Administrator said that the move was made to ensure “artificial intelligence dominance.” The Acid Rain Program is, by all accounts, one of the most successful environmental protection programs in history; it has reduced SO2 emissions by 95% since 1990 and NOx emissions by 89%. These reductions in emissions have contributed to significantly cleaner air and lower mortality.
Take Two Actions!
Support SB 954, which will fix an overzealous reform of CEQA in last year’s legislative session. Information and a letter to send to ASM Chris Rogers are at: https://righttoknow-sb954.org/go/yes
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Last Chance Alliance asks us to oppose two bad oil and gas industry bills:
There are two new Big Oil bills moving through the state legislature right now.
AB 2711: Bringing Kern County’s oil free-for-all to a neighborhood near you. Big Oil lobbyists are trying to take the drilling chaos in Kern County and expand it statewide. AB 2711 attacks environmental review for oil and gas wells across California, aiming to expand the dirtiest energy in the state with fewer safeguards, less scrutiny, and less community input. Los Angeles. The Central Coast. Your town. All of it on the table.
AB 2716: Making taxpayers clean up Big Oil’s mess. Oil companies have already walked away from thousands of aging wells, leaving behind leaking infrastructure, contaminated soil, and poisoned groundwater. AB 2716 would weaken the rules that are supposed to make polluters pay for cleanup, and leave the rest of us footing even more of the bill.
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