Beat
The energy transition, the science, and the weather — in plain English.
The US moves to ban the little box that lets China's solar reach the grid →
Washington is drafting a ban on foreign-made inverters — the device that connects solar panels and batteries to the power grid — over fears China could use them to switch supply off from afar. The panels were never the worry. The control was.
China's energy plan builds the most clean power on Earth — and burns near-record coal at the same time →
Beijing's new five-year plan targets half its electricity from non-fossil sources by 2030 while holding coal near record levels. The contradiction dissolves once you see what China is really chasing: energy independence, not lower emissions.
The Philippines is now the world's biggest buyer of solar panels — because its power bills got unbearable →
With electricity prices the highest in Southeast Asia and climbing since the Iran war began, Filipinos are putting solar on their own roofs faster than anyone else on Earth. The catch: the people most crushed by the bills can least afford the escape.
Europe's roads are buckling, its trains are slowing, its homes have no escape — the built world was made for a cooler climate →
A record heatwave is not just killing people across Europe. It is exposing how much of the physical world — highways, rail lines, rooftops, water supply — was designed for temperatures that no longer hold.
A US tax-credit deadline is making solar developers stampede before July 4 →
Solar companies have rushed to lock in federal subsidies before a July 4 cutoff, building a 200-gigawatt backlog of projects — nearly doubling the US solar fleet — while warning that power from any deal struck after the deadline could cost 40 to 120 percent more.
The US government is now paying companies to scrap the offshore wind it already sold them →
California is suing over $2.5 billion in federal deals to cancel offshore wind leases — money that also pushes the same developers toward oil and gas. It's the clearest sign yet that the energy transition can run in reverse.
France hits its hottest day ever, and quietly reaches for the one fix it spent years resisting →
A record-breaking heatwave is forcing Europe to confront air conditioning — the cooling it needs to survive heat that more cooling helps create. Meanwhile China's coal use is climbing again as its grid struggles to keep pace with the same rising demand.
The US bets $17.5 billion on nuclear power — a decade before it can deliver →
Washington poured conditional loans into ten new reactors to feed the AI boom, even as it killed a nearly-built wind farm and battery storage set records. The bet is on the slowest power source to answer the fastest-moving demand.
Regulators move to clear a 438-gigawatt traffic jam of data centers waiting for power →
A flood of speculative AI data center requests has gummed up the power grid; FERC and Texas are now changing the rules to sort real projects from phantom ones.
Germany pledged to quit coal. A gas-price shock just made it look at coal again →
A jump in global gas prices after the Iran conflict has Germany — and Japan, Italy and India — quietly reconsidering the coal plants they promised to shut. The fallback you keep alive is the one you reach for when the new path gets expensive.
Europe's carmakers are finally building EVs small again — and it matters more than it looks →
A wave of small, cheap electric cars is arriving in Europe just as a record heatwave bakes the continent. The two stories share a root: for years, the easy money pulled the energy transition toward bigger, heavier, more wasteful — and that bias has a cost.
A power line dreamed up in 2006 finally switched on this week →
After roughly 18 years of permits, a Pentagon objection, and lawsuits, the $11 billion SunZia line went live — carrying New Mexico wind to a million homes, and showing how slowly the grid actually changes.
The government is now paying companies to not build wind farms →
Interior paid Invenergy $765M to cancel four offshore wind leases — and the developer is moving the money into gas. Meanwhile California's market is doing the opposite, with solar now beating gas on most days.
The ocean took the heat for us. Now it's giving it back →
A new global climate report shows the ocean has soaked up more than 90% of the heat we've trapped — and the warmth it stored for decades is starting to surface as marine heatwaves, rising seas, and stranger weather.
AI's power plants are going up next door — before the neighbours hear about it →
Dozens of large gas plants built to feed a single data center are skipping the hearings and studies that normally apply, a Reuters review finds.
The Colorado River is running out of slack — and seven states still can't agree how to share what's left →
A year of extreme drought has pushed the West's biggest reservoirs toward levels not seen in decades, and the states that depend on them are now threatening to sue each other. Plus: Spain shows what cheap renewables do to your bill in a gas crisis, China comes for diesel trucks, and a Saharan heat plume settles over Europe.
Just as two big climate signals start moving, the instruments watching them are being switched off →
A historic El Niño is developing and the Atlantic's heat conveyor may be weakening — but the U.S. is dismantling a $386m ocean-sensor network and Europe's monitoring of the Atlantic current is under threat of being discontinued. The cheapest thing to cut is the eyes.
Japan looks to Greenland for rare earths — the clean transition's scramble for hard ground →
A Japanese delegation heads to Greenland this summer to scout rare-earth mining. It's a small trip with a big tell: the magnets that run wind turbines and electric cars are buried in a few remote, contested places, and the race to control them is reshaping the map.
The U.S. wind industry hit a wall — not a ban, but a pause that won't end →
The Pentagon quietly stopped reviewing onshore wind farms in April. No law changed, no project was rejected — the reviews just stopped, and 106 projects across 21 states are frozen. On the same day, two courts ordered the Energy Department to restore clean-energy grants it cancelled in states that voted Democratic.
El Niño is officially back — and forecasters think it could be one of the strongest on record →
NOAA declared El Niño on Thursday, with a 63% chance it grows into a "super" event that pours extra heat onto an already-warmed planet — likely making next year the hottest ever measured. Plus: solar out-generates coal in the US for the first time, and a new study reads an ancient warning in the Gulf Stream.
BYD says it will be the world's biggest carmaker — by building inside the walls meant to keep it out →
China's BYD set out to overtake Toyota within five years, pledged £1.8bn for five-minute chargers in Europe, and chose to build cars in Hungary and Spain to slip under EU tariffs — even as the Pentagon blacklisted it as a military company.
The world's biggest banks lent more to fossil fuels last year, not less →
65 banks pledged $906bn to coal, oil and gas in 2025 — an 8% rise — even as a US heat study warns of doubling hospital visits. The money and the damage are pulling in opposite directions.
Five years on, airlines say the net-zero promise was never really theirs to keep →
The aviation industry now admits its 2050 net-zero pledge will likely fail, and blames fuel makers, governments and planemakers. Meanwhile it fights an EU plan to put a real price on its carbon — and a UN report warns the oceans it flies over are deteriorating fast.
An oil shock is quietly redrawing the energy transition →
OPEC+ raised output targets it cannot meet, airlines took a $100bn jet-fuel hit, and electric cars suddenly look cheap — all downstream of one closed strait. Meanwhile China is pouring money into low-carbon industry precisely because fossil fuels keep delivering shocks like this one.
The power bill becomes the climate fight, as data centers and coal collide →
New York moved to ban giant AI data centers, Trump put $800 million into coal to feed rising demand, and Jamaica's grid went dark — while a blocked oil strait failed to break prices. The thread is electricity: who gets it, where it comes from, and what it costs.
AI's electricity hunger is reviving nuclear power →
Surging demand — much of it from data centers — is pulling nuclear back into the energy picture and straining grids, even as the oil market stays tight, an Arctic drilling auction flops, and the instruments that watch the climate face cuts.
Washington pays $700m to keep coal running, as batteries scale to do its job →
President Trump invoked Cold War-era emergency powers to send $700 million to the coal industry, protecting 14 plants and 42 mines on a reliability-and-cost argument. At the same time, the cheap batteries that fill the same grid gaps are scaling fast — the world's biggest battery maker expects storage to be half its sales by 2030, and a Colorado utility just ran a full month on 100% renewables.
The oil shock is hurting the green transition and speeding it up at the same time →
Europe warned the Iran war's energy-price surge could cost 1.3 million jobs — including, oddly, tens of thousands in solar and batteries. Meanwhile in India, the same expensive fuel is pushing buyers into electric cars faster than any policy managed. One shock, pulling the energy transition in two directions at once.
The grid becomes the climate story: cheap clean power, nowhere to put it →
Brazil is throwing away clean power it can't use, the EU is racing to rein in data-centre demand, and a record-warm May reminds everyone why the wires matter.