By Brooklyn Smith, The Cool Down (TCD).  Excerpt: In Northern Ireland, a four-bedroom house shows what happens when a family runs both its home energy use and its driving on electricity: two major expenses collapse into a single, lower bill. The owners of Tigh Beag, in the Glens of Antrim, said running the property and their electric vehicle together costs about £44 (approximately $59 USD) per week. ...Anne-Marie McGoldrick said, "We wanted a home that was really comfortable and easy to live in and that's exactly what we've ended up with. It just makes everyday life feel comfortable and effortless. And it's reassuring to know when we hear about another tariff hike or diesel price rise, we're much less affected. So much of our energy comes from our own renewable generation and battery storage, which gives us a lot more peace of mind." ...roughly half of [the cost] contributing to driving; and that's around 12,000 miles per year."...Instead of sending ...

By Ajit Niranjan , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Heat killed a record 50,000 people in European cities this summer, new research suggests, with scientists blaming climate breakdown for two in every three of the deaths. Morgues and funeral homes filled with bodies from June to August as the heat added by planet-baking pollution cut short an extra 32,000 lives in urban areas, the researchers found. Hot days pushed vulnerable bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering. The “staggering” death toll, modelled using historical relationships between heat and health in 854 cities, was the worst on record, the study found. Hot weather marked by relentless heatwaves killed nearly twice as many people as it did in each of the two next most dangerous years. ...People succumbed to heat at the highest rates in Malta, Italy and Hungary, while absolute death tolls were greatest in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the UK. Because death certificates rarely record contributing fa...

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 Stefano Valentino in Sulawesi and Ajit Niranjan .The Guardian.  Excerpt: Volkswagen, Ford and Tesla are among the electric carmakers whose batteries may contain nickel mined in indigenous woodlands plagued by deforestation, an analysis has found, highlighting the struggle to make vehicles that are free from environmental destruction. Corporate disclosures and trade flows from the last two years show mines in the battery supply chains of automotive giants are linked to the loss of trees in Sulawesi, a wildlife hotspot in Indonesia that houses the world’s largest nickel deposits. The metal is widely used in cathodes in car batteries because it boosts energy density and increases range. Ore from the Cahaya and Hengjaya mines was traced through regional smelters and Chinese processing plants run by Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a cathode manufacturer that supplies CATL, the world’s largest battery maker. Huayou’s corporate reports list US and European carmakers as end-users, while addi...

By Kathy Barnes, Better Homes and Gardens.  Excerpt: “If you’ve ever wanted to try solar power without committing to rooftop panels, permits, or installation costs, plug-in panels might be the way to go. Plug-in solar panels won’t power your entire home or replace a rooftop system. But in the right setting—with good sunlight and realistic expectations—they can trim energy costs, reduce daytime grid use, and make solar more accessible.” ...Unlike traditional rooftop solar systems, these units don’t require permanent installation. Anyone can use plug-in solar units, including renters , and place them on a balcony or patio, in the yard, or near a sunny window, with a power cord plugged into an outdoor-rated outlet. ...Experts say that a 300- to 400-watt system can reduce daytime electricity use by 5% to 15%, depending on how much sunlight it captures and your usage habits. ...A starter plug-in solar system has a relatively low barrier to entry. Smaller systems cost up to $800 for a 4...

By Eric Ralls , earth.com.  Excerpt: The heatwave season has stretched by about 39 days since 1979, with the biggest shifts in dry regions and a recent rise in fast-peaking heat. Scientists have mostly judged heatwaves by how often they strike, how hot they get and how long they last. When they show up in the year has drawn far less attention, and that timing is shifting across most of the world’s land. A new global analysis finds that the heatwave season now starts earlier, ends later and has been stretching at both ends since the late 1970s. Between 1979 and 2023, the first heatwave of the warm season arrived about two weeks earlier, and the last one ended about 24 days later. Put together, the stretch from first heatwave to last grew by roughly 39 days. The researchers counted heat that’s unusual for the date, so an early heatwave isn’t always as hot as one in midsummer. Wenfang Xu of the South China Botanical Garden , part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , is the study’s fir...