By Erik Stokstad , Science.  Excerpt: In 2003, wildlife biologists made a gruesome discovery on a mountain in West Virginia. Several thousand bats had been killed at a new wind farm. Until then, birds such as hawks and eagles were thought to be at the most risk of being struck dead by the massive spinning blades at the top of wind turbines. More than 28 bat species have since been confirmed as victims at similar facilities nationwide. But it has been challenging to estimate just how many bats are dying. Now, the most comprehensive study to date has yielded a distressingly large number. Some 18.7 million bats died from wind turbines in the United States between 1981 and 2024, it estimates—and the problem has grown dramatically worse in recent years. The research, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , suggests about 100,000 bats died per year 2 decades ago. But by 2021, the boom in wind farms had pushed the toll to 1.5 million bats annually. ...The...

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 . 

By Nathaniel Eisen , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Picture a buoyant triangular steel or concrete platform roughly the dimensions of a baseball field.  Now place a wind turbine taller than the London Eye on top, connect mooring lines to the seabed and power cables to the grid, and you’ve got a floating wind turbine. This fantastical-sounding technology is real. At demonstration and small-scale projects in Europe, Asia and a single U.S. site in Maine, floating turbines are producing power. Multiple different platform designs have been field tested, from the aforementioned triangle to a single massive cylinder. But plans to build larger projects of 10 or more turbines, each capable of powering a neighborhood, have lagged behind early projections. The business case for floating turbines, as opposed to their fixed-bottom counterparts, boils down to two points: they can do their thing making power farther from shore, where the high winds are and the people generally aren’t. In so...

By NRDC Nature's Voice Fall 2026 issue.  Excerpt: This past April marked the first time ever that wind and solar power accounted for more electricity generation than gas worldwide, with the two renewable sources responsible for 22 percent of global electricity generation versus 20 percent from gas. …just five years ago, in aApril 2021, gas accounted for nearly twice the electricity generation as wind and solar. As for the United States, May was the first month that solar provided more power than coal.  From https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/nature_s_voice_fall_2026 . 

By Dan Gearino , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Utility-scale solar leads by a mile, followed by batteries. Fossil fuels, not so much. ...368 utility-scale plants that began operation from January to June, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration . The group is dominated by utility-scale solar. This is a top-heavy list, led by SunZia Wind South and SunZia Wind North in New Mexico , which went online this spring and are the largest wind farms in the country, with a combined generating capacity of 3,650 megawatts. ...the story of power plant completions in the first half of 2026 was mainly about utility-scale solar and batteries. Utility-scale solar led in the number of projects coming online, with 207, followed by batteries, with 95. ...If we look at projects in terms of generating capacity, utility-scale solar led with 11,458 megawatts, followed by batteries, 8,207 megawatts, and then onshore wind, mostly because of the SunZia projects, with 5,473 megawatts...

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 Aman Azhar , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The Trump administration has abandoned its effort to halt wind energy projects across the United States and dropped its challenge to the court ruling that tossed President Donald Trump’s order freezing federal permitting and leasing for wind projects. States that challenged the order hailed the development as one of the most significant legal victories against the Trump White House’s campaign against the energy transition. On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit dismissed the appeal after the Justice Department filed a motion for its voluntary dismissal on June 10.  The case against Trump’s executive order was filed in May, 2025 by a coalition of attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., led by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Monday’s decision affirms the Dec. 8 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris, which concluded that Trump’s January 2025 executive order was unlawful, findin...

By Ishan Thakore , Colorado Public Radio (CPR) News.  Excerpt: Renewable energy production has more than doubled in Colorado over the last decade, according to a new report from the advocacy groups Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) and Environment Colorado. In 2025, solar, wind and geothermal produced the equivalent of 44% of the power consumed in the state, up from just 19% in 2016. Solar saw a particularly large jump — the state generated eight times as much solar power last year compared to 2016.  The lion’s share of Colorado’s renewable electricity comes from wind energy. The state produced enough electricity from wind last year to power more than 1.5 million homes, according to the report.  Colorado also saw a massive increase in the number of registered electric vehicles and installed EV charging ports compared to 2016. ...The nationwide increase in renewable energy is being driven in part by its lower costs. Utility-scale solar and wind farms now pr...

By Brandon Mulder, The Texas Tribune .  Excerpt: A decade ago, wind power was surging in popularity and attracting huge investments that made Texas a national leader in renewable energy. But today, gas generation is making a big comeback, driven by a wave of data centers flooding into the state. For the last six months, the volume of gas generation in the Texas grid’s interconnection queue — the yearslong waiting list for electric generators wanting to connect to the grid — has surpassed wind. It’s the first time since January 2016 that gas has overtaken wind in the queue, a shift that reflects the policy and economic headwinds facing the wind industry and data centers favoring gas power as they seek to cash in on the artificial intelligence boom. ...Still, the queue gives an early indication of how the grid is projected to evolve in the future. Solar and battery projects dominate, accounting for 75% of the 458,000 megawatts in the queue, with gas and wind projects making up the re...

By Julia Simon, NPR.  Excerpt: ...Colombia is a major global coal producer, as well as an oil and gas producer. But in recent years, Colombia's government has been diversifying its economy and  transitioning away from fossil fuels , the single biggest driver of human-caused climate change. The country isn't alone. This week, Colombia and the Netherlands—the birthplace of oil giant Shell—co-hosted the "Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference" in Santa Marta, just north of the coal port. At a hotel by the sea, representatives of more than 50 countries participated in a two-day high-level conference to discuss concrete ways to phase out oil, gas, and coal. ...These high-level talks happened amidst the backdrop of a warming planet and an energy crisis spurred by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. High oil and gas prices and energy shortages triggered by the recent war have created what the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, has called ...

By Anna Griffin , The New York Times.  Excerpt: For decades, the fierce desert wind has been the only thing moving with any speed at the former Minidoka, Idaho, internment camp, other than an occasional car passing the site where more than 13,000 Japanese Americans were held behind barbed wire from 1942 through 1945. ...winds were supposed to propel turbines — some twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty — at Lava Ridge, a wind energy project that would have stretched across tens of thousands of acres of federal land. Instead, an unlikely coalition of internees’ descendants, ranchers, tribal leaders, environmentalists, Republican elected officials and conservative renewable energy opponents slowed the project long enough for President Trump to win election in 2024 — then kill it. The death of Lava Ridge last August points to the complexity of meeting America’s growing hunger for energy in the artificial intelligence era, amid the conflicting demands of climate scientists and land co...

By Arcelia Martin , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: Texas state officials have led a successful and concerted effort to prevent offshore wind developments in the Gulf. ...even as five offshore wind projects resume construction this month after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s stop-work order for the developments, Texas has none in the mix. The U.S. has a small number of projects operating off the East Coast, totalling some 40 gigawatts. Texas leads the nation in wind energy, producing more than a fifth of the country’s wind-sourced electricity. Studies show the region could have similar success offshore, especially given the state’s experience building oil and gas rigs in the Gulf. Yet an auction of federal seabed leases nearly three years ago saw no bids. ...chief among [the reasons] is the political hostility from state leaders, and, more recently, the federal government, toward this type of renewable energy....  Full article at https://insideclima...

By Maxine Joselow  and  Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston. ...In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas-trump-total.html . 

By Nature's Voice Spring 2026 (Natural Resources Defense Council—NRDC).  Excerpt: It’s been one legal blow after another against the Trump administration’s war on wind energy. In December, a federal court ruled that the administration’s blanket ban on new wind projects is illegal. That was followed in quick succession by five separate court rulings preliminarily halting the administration’s attempt to stop construction on five multibillion-dollar wind projects off the East Coast. Says Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at NRDC: “The administration should use this string of court losses as a wake-up call and get out of the way of the expansion of renewable energy.”...  Source at https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/nature_s_voice_spring_2026 (page 2).

By Brad Plumer  and  Rebecca F. Elliott , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A week before the 2024 election, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. But the wind farm soon became a casualty of President Trump’s efforts to slow — and sometimes revoke — federal approvals for wind and solar projects. A key  environmental review  of Jackalope by the Interior Department was stalled for months, and the project is now effectively dead. Similar stories are unfolding nationwide. While Mr. Trump’s  attacks on offshore wind  have been highly visible, his administration has also been hobbling solar and wind energy projects on land by halting or delaying federal approvals that were once routine....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/climate...

By KEN MORITSUGU Associated Press.  Excerpt: BEIJING -- Even as China's expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world's largest emitter will  reduce carbon emissions enough  to limit climate change. ...At the same time, even larger  additions of wind and solar  capacity nudged down the share of coal in total power generation last year. Power from coal fell about 1% as growth in cleaner energy sources covered all the increase in electricity demand last year. ...If more of the nation's  1.4 billion people  climb into the middle class, more will be able to afford air conditioners and washing machines. ...The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day. The shortages in 2022 resulted partly from  a drought  that hit ...

By YaleEnvironment360.  Excerpt: Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second....  Full article at https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-photo-essay . 

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 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...