Climate & Energy

The world's biggest hydrogen firm walks away from its clean bet →

Air Products booked a ~$2.9bn charge exiting clean-hydrogen projects it couldn't sell at a profit, while China set a green-ammonia export record - two ways of handling the same problem: clean fuel still costs far more than the dirty kind.

Solar crossed 3 terawatts - and got so cheap its makers are losing money →

The world's installed solar just tripled to 3 terawatts, and prices have fallen so far that Chinese panel makers are bleeding cash. China's regulator is now trying to stop the price war it built.

Electric cars and solar hit their steep middle →

EV and solar adoption crossed fresh records on two continents at once - the accelerating stretch of a curve that stays flat for years, then bends sharply upward.

The machines got more efficient, and the grid buckled →

AI chips do more computing per watt every year, yet data centres are now driving the first rise in US power emissions in a decade - the clearest sign yet that efficiency alone does not cut total energy use.

The West runs out of water to argue over - and Washington steps in →

The US federal government imposed Colorado River cuts after seven states failed to agree, as drought spread across England and the American West.

Europe blinks - the EU moves to soften its flagship carbon rule →

Brussels proposes slowing the cap-and-trade system that halved its industrial emissions, to "bring relief to industry." The move revives climate policy's oldest question - whether tightening the rules at home just pushes the pollution abroad.

Britain decides whether to open two North Sea oilfields →

A new UK government weighs approving Jackdaw and Rosebank, while the wider evidence keeps needling a comfortable belief - that blocking a well is the same as cutting what the world burns.

Australia bets on a refinery the rest of the world is closing →

A new oil-refinery plan runs against a two-decade retreat, while solar quietly out-produces coal and a fresh El Nino loads the dice for a record-warm year.

The grid's new problem isn't how much clean power, but when →

Solar now floods the middle of the day so hard that prices go negative, then vanishes at the evening peak. The race is to move energy across the hours, not make more of it.

The climate's slow answer to a fast question →

A new study finds that reaching net-zero really does stop the warming, and then slowly reverses it, even as this year's electricity demand and oil keep the carbon flowing.

Why a gas shock lifts your power bill even where gas barely runs →

The IEA says a Middle East gas-price spike is pushing electricity prices up worldwide - because in most markets the last, priciest unit needed sets the price every generator gets paid.

West Africa signs off a $25bn gas pipeline that will outlive us all →

Fourteen nations backed a 6,000km Atlantic gas line to Europe - one of a run of decades-long fossil bets being locked in this week, even as solar quietly overtook coal.

The power industry is ordering gas turbines for 2031 — chasing demand nobody can yet see →

A record turbine order book, a data-center forecast that keeps swinging, and a bill that lands on ordinary ratepayers — plus Europe's heat toll and the EV slowdown.

AI's data centres are outrunning the grid built to feed them →

The world's electricity demand is speeding up, and computing is a big reason why. New reports this week put hard numbers on the gap between what AI needs and what the grid can build — and on who pays.

Lake Powell is one foot from switching off its own power →

A federal forecast puts the Colorado River's second-biggest reservoir a single foot above the level where its dam stops making electricity — while the US clean-energy retreat picks up speed.

US power emissions rose 4% last year — in the middle of a clean-energy boom →

America added more clean power than ever and still put out more carbon, because demand hit a record and coal filled the gap. The number that fell and the number that rose are both true.

America's largest grid just came up short on its own safety cushion →

A once-a-year auction that buys the power grid's spare capacity cleared far below target — a quiet number that tells you where electricity bills, data centers, and the energy transition all collide.

Heat is quietly taking a cut of India's pay packets →

New research puts a figure on a cost that never gets counted — while a central bank shuts a door on coal without banning it, and Finland heats its schools with sand.

A new British PM is set to reopen the North Sea — and split his own party over it →

Andy Burnham is expected to approve new oil and gas drilling on his first day in Downing Street, reviving fields his own party once called "climate vandalism" and reopening the fight over whether homegrown fossil fuels actually lower anyone's bills.

The EU moves to slow the climate rules it built to bind itself →

Brussels unveiled a plan to loosen its flagship carbon market and delay methane fines under US pressure — the same week Washington eased protections for endangered species. Behind both: a surge in electricity demand and near-term economic pressure that make long-term climate rules feel expensive now.

A top science panel says extreme weather now carries fingerprints →

The U.S. National Academies formally backs the science of tying specific storms and heatwaves to climate change — as Washington and Europe both look for ways to slow the energy transition down.

Canada is on fire again — and the smoke is already crossing into US cities →

With 838 wildfires burning nationwide, Toronto woke to some of the world's worst air and the haze is drifting south — a fire season that keeps feeding itself.

Three states move in one day to shield power bills from the AI boom →

New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois all acted on July 14 to protect electricity customers from the cost of the data-center buildout — the first political pushback against a strain that's been building for months.

A heatwave is running up Europe's power demand and knocking out its power at the same time →

A two-week heat dome over Europe and the US is killing thousands, burning forests near Paris, and — in a twist most coverage misses — throttling the very nuclear plants meant to keep the lights on, because the rivers that cool them have grown too warm.

A wave of carbon-burial projects has small-town America fighting back — and a scientist fighting a columnist →

Oil-linked firms are racing to bury CO2 underground for billions in US subsidies, alarming towns like Clymers, Indiana — while scientists and critics argue over whether carbon capture is climate salvation or a licence to keep drilling. Meanwhile, Europe's late-June heat killed an estimated 10,000, and Britain's biggest community solar farm was ordered to switch off.

New York quietly built a power plant out of 276,000 rooftops →

The state hit 8 gigawatts of small-scale solar — ahead of schedule — while Illinois and Massachusetts built the plumbing that lets scattered rooftops and batteries act as one. The clean-energy build-out is proving harder to stall than expected.

The government is paying billions to keep coal running — and it lands on your power bill →

Trump has spent $2.7bn paying companies to cancel wind projects and $1.125bn propping up coal, the fuel utilities were already retiring because it costs too much. The check to keep it alive is the story.

A federal regulator calls the largest U.S. power grid "untenable" — and the problem isn't the wires →

PJM keeps 65 million people supplied across 13 states, but a FERC commissioner says its consensus-run stakeholder process has "ground into gridlock" — while a $100-billion grid buildout waits on decisions it can't make.

A North Sea gas field says it's "too small to matter" — and that argument is the whole climate fight →

The owners of the Jackdaw field say its emissions won't "materially influence" global warming. It's less than 0.02% of the world's total — and equal to 90% of Scotland's. Both numbers are true. Which one counts is the question underneath everything.

The battery of the future might just be table salt — and that's the whole point →

Sodium-ion batteries — made from salt instead of scarce lithium — are cheap enough and good enough to reach the market, while a $400M storm bill and a Walmart nuclear deal show the grid's slower moving parts still grinding on.

Trump's war on wind loses in court, five for five — but the buyouts kill the projects anyway →

The administration lost every legal fight to stop offshore wind, then simply paid $2.6bn to cancel the leases instead. Plus: a hedge-fund owner piles into fossil fuels, a US utility swaps coal for gas, and Cuba's grid goes dark.

OPEC+ opens the taps again as oil sinks below $72 — the cartel would rather have the market than the price →

The oil group agreed a fifth straight monthly output rise even as prices fall, choosing to defend its share of the market over propping up the price. Plus a battery site wins on appeal, South Korea charges four refiners, and the sea sends Greece a poisonous new problem.

India blends 20% ethanol into every litre of petrol — and drivers are pushing back →

A national mandate to mix ethanol into fuel now covers every pump in India. The state gains — less imported oil, money to farmers — but the small daily cost lands on drivers who never chose it. Plus: Britain's green power stuck between approval and the grid, and the US EV moment slipping away.

Europe's heatwave killed thousands — and most of it never looked like a disaster →

France logged more than 2,000 excess deaths in a single week as a record June heat scorched the continent; the toll arrives quietly, in hospitals and homes, not in the images we call catastrophe.

A heat wave forces the AI grid reckoning early →

A record heat wave pushed the biggest US grid to the edge, and the federal government ordered old fossil plants to run flat out — as regulators scramble to plan for the data-center demand still coming.

The power AI needs is being built off the grid — and the rules for grids don't apply →

A new report finds 74 gas plants planned to power US data centers directly could emit as much as a whole country, skipping the years of permits and hearings that grid plants face. Meanwhile New Jersey moves to make data centers pay their own way, and Europe's solar boom keeps outrunning its grid.