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This Unexpected Country Is Building The EU's Biggest Solar Farm

By Sead Fadilpasic, BGR.  Excerpt: When you hear the word Romania, what first springs to mind is probably medieval castles or the legendary Count Dracula. Now, you can add renewable energy to the list. According to Balkan Green Energy News, Romania will finally become home to the largest solar power project in the entire EU. Rezolv Energy, the company behind the project, got the green light from the Romanian Energy Regulatory Authority to move forward with constructing a massive solar site in Romania's Arad province: the Dama Solar. Spain's Iberian Peninsula solar panels already produced a surplus of energy in 2026, and England is investing heavily in solar farms. Now Europe has a new green energy haven, it seems. Valued at approximately 520 million euros, this single facility will take up over 2,400 acres of land in the northwest and will be powerful enough to deliver peak capacity of as many as 1.3 gigawatts. For reference, Germany's Witznitz, currently the biggest facili...

US renewable energy tops 30% of the grid as coal continues to slide

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/ . 

Seven Articles on Climate and Personal Health

https://eos.org/themes/climate-and-personal-health .  Individual Consequences of a Global Crisis (2026-09-01) Antimicrobial Resistance Is Killing Millions. Climate Change Is Making It Worse. (2026-09-01) Climate Change Will Reshape Malaria Prevalence Across Africa (2026-08-27) Many Americans Underestimate Health Risks of Extreme Weather, New Study Finds (2026-08-10) Distant Oceans May Help Predict Malaria Risk in Malawi (2026-07-30) Lessons from Linking Great Salt Lake Desiccation and Depression (2026-04-10) Wildfire Smoke Linked to 17,000 Strokes Annually in the United States (2026-01-27)

NPR spent 2 years tracking deaths from heat. We found a staggering hidden toll

By Alejandra Borunda , NPR.  Excerpt: The primary keeper of cause-of-death records in the U.S. is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It keeps an annual tally of heat-related deaths in the U.S., which is compiled from state reports based on whether heat is noted on individual death records. From 2004 to 2018, the national number of heat-related deaths compiled by the CDC was low: on average, around 700 a year . The number has crept up in recent years, averaging around 1,700 but sometimes topping 2,000, as heat risks grow and counting strategies evolve. But even that number is an underestimate, according to NPR and BU's analysis. On average between 2018 and 2025, we estimate that some 9,000 deaths each year in the country are impacted by heat — a factor of five higher than the official average over that same period. Some years, heat-related deaths can top 10,000. The true figure could be even higher, says Adams, because of some limitations in the data and the conse...

Narwhals document atlantification of East Greenland

By Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen   et al, Science.  Excerpt: To resolve temperature and salinity changes in remote East Greenland coastal waters, including deep glacier-front basins, we equipped narwhals ( Monodon monoceros ) with conductivity-temperature-depth archival instruments. These data, combined with the World Ocean Database, reveal long-term warming of Atlantic Intermediate Water (AIW) penetrating East Greenland’s coastal system. ...Elevated summer iceberg discharge coincides with higher temperatures and salinities below 200 meters, indicating an intensified AIW influence. These observations show that warming AIW delivers heat directly to glacier fronts, promoting submarine melt and accelerating glacier mass loss....  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr1424 . 

The chefs turning down the heat by switching from gas to electric

By Fiona Harvey , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Leaping flames, searing heat, copious sweat and scorchingly inventive swearing – restaurant kitchens are never a place for the faint-hearted, but this summer they have been sweltering in successive heatwaves to a dangerous degree. Some restaurants, cafes and bakeries in the UK grew so hot that they were forced to close , or reduce their hours , for the safety of their staff. ...tens of thousands of kitchen staff are thought to have carried on working in “furnace-like” conditions . Now a number of chefs are calling for one route to cooling kitchens.... Swapping gas hobs for electric induction cooking can reduce temperatures by as much as 10C, as induction cookers only heat the food in the pans . They are more efficient, ...are safer as they avoid the harmful pollutants emitted by gas cookers, and make it easier for air conditioning to work in crowded kitchen environments. ...A report from the Global Cooksafe Coalition found that restaurant...

Africa set for solar installations record in 2026

By Preeti Jha , Semafor.  Excerpt: Africa is set for a record year of solar installations, according to new analysis. The continent is on track to install 17 gigawatts of solar in 2026 , up 45% year-on-year, according to the global energy think tank Ember and the African Tech Futures Lab. ...International Renewable Energy Agency...IRENA said solutions such as solar mini-grids were “ crucial for expanding access to dispersed and underserved populations ” in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Senegal, where rural electrification rates can range from 2% to 10% in certain areas. Inadequate energy and infrastructure investment has meant nearly 600 million people in Africa still lack access to electricity. Many countries are turning to the potential of solar power: Last year, Nigeria struck a $200 million deal with a renewable energy company to connect rural areas with solar mini-grids....  Full article at https://www.semafor.com/article/08/28/2026/africa...