By ANTON L. DELGADO , AP.  Excerpt: BANGKOK (AP) — China is exporting a record amount of clean energy technology and equipment as the energy crisis from the Iran war drives surging demand for renewables , and that will help reduce global emissions, according to a report released Thursday. Once installed or deployed, these 2026 exports will likely avert emissions of about 450 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, roughly equal to Brazil’s annual emissions, says the analysis by the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air [CREA]. It’s a small sign of progress as global efforts to curb climate change fall short. In November, Turkey will host annual U.N. climate talks where electrification is expected to be a leading topic. Record-breaking year for Chinese exports ...China is by far the largest global supplier of renewable energy equipment, from solar panels and wind turbines to electric vehicles and batteries. Most of what it makes is sold domestically ...

By Michelle Lewis , Eletrek.  Excerpt: Over the coming year, renewables’ share of total generating capacity will grow from 37.7% to 40.4%, surpassing that of natural gas and outstripping nuclear capacity fivefold, according to new data released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign. Renewable electricity generation grew by more than 10% over the past year. According to the EIA’s latest “ Electric Power Monthly ” report (with data through August 31, 2026), renewably generated electricity during the first two-thirds of 2026 was 10.2% greater year over year. The growth was led by utility-scale [>1 MW] solar (up 20.0%), small-scale solar (up 12.0%), wind (up 7.8%), hydropower (up 4.2%), and geothermal (up 3.8%). From January to August 2026, wind produced 333,367 gigawatt-hours (GWh) – 10.6% of total US electrical generation – while utility-scale and small-scale solar combined produced 329,119 GWh (10.5%), hydropower produced 180,940 G...

By Sara Herschander , Vox.  Excerpt: When the sun goes down, the wind picks up in central New Mexico, whipping through arid canyons with a ghostly howl that for centuries, locals have likened to the wails of the folkloric ghost La Llorona. A few hours east of Albuquerque, this June, those gusts began powering the largest wind farm this continent has ever seen, twirling over 900 colossal steel turbines. Each is as tall as the Statue of Liberty, scattered across a patch of desert roughly the size of Chicago. They plug into a 550-mile transmission line stitched across the Southwest and are now powering over one million homes — as far away as California....  Full article at https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/507189/sunzia-wind-energy-transmission-project . 

Fervo Energy press release.  Excerpt: Fervo Energy (Nasdaq: FRVO), a global pioneer of next-generation geothermal energy, today announced that Cape Station , its flagship geothermal development in Beaver County, Utah, has achieved First Power, marking the first time a utility-scale enhanced geothermal development has reached this milestone anywhere in the world....Fervo uses horizontal drilling techniques adapted from the oil and gas industry, allowing multiple wells to be drilled from a single pad and unlocking geothermal resources that were previously inaccessible with traditional technology.  “Cape Station works because we treated the subsurface like an engineering challenge,” said Jack Norbeck, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Fervo Energy. “Years of drilling, completion design, subsurface modeling, and flow testing led to this moment, and this is the validation that matters most. First Power is proof the science works.” ...Enhanced geothermal draws continu...

By  Maxine Joselow , The New York Times. The New York Times. Excerpt: “Nobody wants a full blanket ban or zero exports of diesel,” [Energy Secretary Chris] Wright said. ...Asked why he did not see a brighter future for solar energy in the United States, Mr. Wright said, “Every day, actually, the sun goes down, it doesn’t produce power at all.” While it is true that solar panels can only produce power when the sun is shining, enormous batteries can store excess electricity generated during the day for use around the clock. Mr. Wright also defended the Energy Department’s cancellation of more than $7.5 billion in grants for clean energy projects in states that had voted for Democrats. He told Congress in June that politics had nothing to do with the decision. Federal officials later acknowledged in court documents that they had rescinded the funding “based solely” on political considerations....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/climate/chris-wright-trump-ener...

By Anna Conkling , Grist, and co-published with The Kyiv Independent .  Excerpt: On a spring day earlier this year, 10 men stood on the rooftop of a door manufacturing facility in the central Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva, surveying the rows of solar panels that surrounded them. Since Russia invaded in 2022, the town has endured repeated attacks, triggering mass power outages. For the factory, which supplies doors to homes and businesses, ...outages were particularly brutal in the winter, when limited power supplies led to rolling blackouts across the country. Some days, the employees burned discarded wood in a fireplace to keep the warehouse warm. ...Tired of relying on a grid that was being routinely bombarded by Russian missiles, Yaroslav, the facility’s owner, decided to switch to solar earlier this year. ...Volodymyr Hershtun, a service maintenance manager ...who led the project in Bila Tserkva, said ...“The enemy is trying to destroy energy infrastructure, and we are buildin...

By James Nanzo, The Cool Down.  Excerpt: Clean energy's rise in the United States may be proving harder to slow than critics expected. One explainer by creator bonusmoles (@bonusmoles) is celebrating a milestone that would have seemed ambitious not long ago. Renewables make up more than 30% of the grid while coal continues to slide. In a TikTok video, the content creator used grid data to argue that renewable electricity continues to advance even amid political opposition."Despite Trump's best efforts to stifle renewable energy, it's still going to surpass natural gas by 2027," bonusmoles declared in the video. Among the figures cited in the video was a rise in renewables from less than 28% of the grid to more than 30%. The creator also said renewable energy grew 11% in the first half of 2026, while coal fell 11.3%....  Full article at https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/renewable-energy-growth-united-states-grid/ . 

By Michelle Lewis , Elektrek.  Excerpt: Renewables accounted for 30.0% of total US electrical generation during the first third of 2026, up 2.2% year over year, according to new data recently released by the US Energy Information Administration ( EIA ), and reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign....  Full article at https://electrek.co/2026/06/26/eia-renewables-30-percent-us-electricity-generation/ . 

By Quinn Glabicki , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...researchers, private enterprise and a public utility in the Central Valley are installing solar panels atop the man-made waterways. ...The pilot program, called Project Nexus, is testing solar canopies that researchers say could generate gigawatts of power and save billions of gallons of water by providing shade that slows evaporation. ...The project grew out of a 2021 study by researchers at the University of California, Merced, .... ...Solar-covered canals aren’t an entirely novel idea. Two were completed more than a decade ago in Gujarat, in western India. And along I-10 south of Phoenix, the Gila River Indian Community built a project in 2024....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/climate/california-canals-solar-panels-water-nexus.html .  See also Project Nexus ; news from Governor Newsom ; and UC Newsroom article . 

By Constance Malleret, Christian Science Monitor.  Excerpt: Less than two decades ago, Uruguay was facing a predicament that would feel familiar to people in many countries today. Global oil prices were spiking. The small but growing country’s economy now depended on more imported fossil fuels to meet rising demands for electricity. ...These days, up to 98% of Uruguay’s electricity comes from a combination of wind, solar, hydropower, and biomass. The nation of about 3.4 million people even exports surplus energy to neighboring Argentina and Brazil....  Full article at https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2026/0621/uruguay-green-energy-crisis-hormuz . 

By Hayley Smith , Los Angeles Times.  Excerpt: Nearly two decades in the making, SunZia — an $11-billion New Mexico wind-and-transmission project — is now online, sending new clean power to Arizona and California. Spanning 916 turbines and a 550-mile high-voltage line, the project can power 1 million homes and already has helped drive record wind generation on California’s grid. The project arrives as the Trump administration doubles down on fossil fuel investments and works to slow the development of offshore wind. The largest wind energy project in U.S. history is now online...signaling a new era for sending clean electricity across the West....  Full article at https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-06-18/after-nearly-two-decades-this-massive-new-mexico-wind-project-is-now-powering-california . 

By Elena Giordano , Politico.  Excerpt: Public enthusiasm for clean energy comes as the Iran war exposes Europe’s vulnerability to global oil and gas markets....  Full article at https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-europeans-back-renewables-despite-higher-energy-costs/ . 

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Clean energy isn’t dead in the Trump era. But it does look different these days. Since returning to office, President Trump  has dismantled federal efforts  to fight climate change and vowed to stop new wind turbines from going up. His administration  has canceled billions of dollars in funding  for technologies that might one day help reduce planet-warming emissions, and it has instead pushed to expand domestic oil and gas drilling. Those moves have taken a brutal toll on America’s budding clean energy industry, including  canceled offshore wind farms ,  shuttered electric-car factories  and  layoffs  at climate technology start-ups. Yet many clean energy executives say they are finding ways to adapt, and some promising technologies that might help slow global warming are moving forward. Some industries, such as geothermal energy or nuclear power, still receive support from the Trump admini...

By Tom Chivers , SEMAFOR.  Excerpt: Renewables are being deployed aggressively across much of the world even as the US, historically the world’s biggest emitter, overturned a landmark domestic climate ruling. ...Elsewhere in the world, however, green technology is being implemented at pace: Africa’s solar capacity expanded 17% last year, with 20 of the continent’s nations  setting import records , and data this week showed that China’s emissions  may already be falling  thanks in large part to its huge outlay on clean power. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency said renewables and nuclear will account by  half of global power supply by 2030 ....  Full article at https://www.semafor.com/article/02/13/2026/renewables-soar-globally-despite-us-climate-pullback . 

By Reuters/The Guardian.  Excerpt: A federal judge on Monday cleared the Danish offshore  wind  developer  Ørsted  to resume work on its nearly finished Revolution Wind project, which  Donald Trump’s administration  halted along with four other projects last month. The ruling by US district judge Royce Lamberth is a legal setback for Trump, who has sought to block expansion of offshore wind in federal waters. Ørsted’s Revolution Wind lawsuit is one of several filed by offshore wind companies and states seeking to reverse the interior department’s 22 December  suspension of five offshore wind leases  over what it said were national security concerns....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/12/orsted-rhode-island-wind-project-trump .

By Science Adviser.  Excerpt: If you’ve ever pressed your face up to a windowpane, you know just how bad it is at insulating—both cold and warm temperatures seem to bleed right through! Researchers have now designed a highly insulating, transparent material for more efficient windows. With buildings consuming around 40% of the world’s energy, the technology could be a promising climate solution. Researchers have previously tried to engineer better windows using gas-filled panes, vacuum insulation, and even transparent aerogels. But they’ve all been pricey, difficult to manufacture, and maladapted to different uses. So, a team started from scratch, designing a new class of metamaterials built from interconnected nanoscale polysiloxane tubes. Because structural features of the material—including the diameter of the nanotubes and sizes of the pores between them—were all smaller than the wavelength of visible light,  the materials let through 99% of sunlight , the researchers repo...

By Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Developers of five offshore wind farms that were ordered last week by the Trump administration to halt construction are suing to restart work on at least three of the projects. The Interior Department on Dec. 22 ordered companies to halt work on five wind farms in various stages of construction along the East Coast. They were: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off the coast of New York; Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts; and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia. The administration cited unspecified national security concerns about the projects. On Thursday, Orsted, the Danish energy giant that is building Revolution Wind, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On Friday Equinor, the developer of Empire Wind, did the same....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/climate/trump-offshore-wind-lawsuit-national-secur...

By Amira El-Fekki‎, Newsweek.  Excerpt: Construction is nearing completion on the world’s largest green hydrogen facility in the Saudi desert, with work accelerating as the year draws to a close. ...The plant is  located at Oxagon , Neom’s massive industrial port complex on the Red Sea, designed to integrate renewable energy production with global logistics and industrial operations. ...The  $8.4 billion project  is a joint venture between Neom, U.S.-based industrial gases company Air Products, and Saudi renewable energy firm ACWA Power, which is backed by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. ...The  $8.4 billion project  is a joint venture between Neom, U.S.-based industrial gases company Air Products, and Saudi renewable energy firm ACWA Power, which is backed by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund. "The project remains on course, with construction 90% complete," aiming to supply carbon‑free hydrogen globally to help decarbonize hard‑to‑abate industries,"...

By Tim Appenzeller , Science.  Excerpt: This year, renewables surpassed coal as a source of electricity worldwide, and solar and wind energy grew fast enough to cover the entire increase in global electricity use from January to June,  according to energy think tank Ember . In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at the United Nations that his country will cut its carbon emissions by as much as 10% in a decade, not by using less energy, but by doubling down on wind and solar. And solar panel imports in Africa and South Asia have soared, as people in those regions realized rooftop solar can cheaply power lights, cellphones, and fans. To many, the continued growth of renewables now seems unstoppable—a prospect that has led  Science  to name the renewable energy surge its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2025 . 

By Chris Baraniuk , WIRED .  Excerpt: ...workers began adding a secret, light brown powder to water as they mixed up a special fluid that can store energy.... Their goal was to achieve a mixture 2.5 times denser than water. ...Pumped hydro first emerged in the late 19th century . During subsequent decades, countries including the US and UK built lots of large plants, though construction had waned by the 1990s . The tech was originally designed to complement fossil fuel power plants, making use of excess energy they produced. But today grid operators increasingly value pumped hydro plants as workhorses able to mediate highly variable wind and solar assets. They can fill in shortfalls in electricity generation or soak up surplus energy within minutes, and store it for short or long periods....  Full article at https://www.wired.com/story/pumped-hydro-energy-storage-is-having-a-renaissance/ .