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/ . 

By Colleen Howe , Reuters.  Excerpt: BEIJING, Nov 12 (Reuters) - China's energy administration said on Wednesday that it will push renewable energy use beyond the power sector over the next five years, aiming to better absorb the country's booming wind and solar output. Provinces and power producers should help local governments to build up their industrial bases for green hydrogen, green ammonia, green methanol, and sustainable aviation fuel during the next five-year plan from 2026-2030, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said in its opinion document on integrating new energy. Green hydrogen ... can serve as a low-carbon fuel for heavy industry and transport, power industrial processes or vehicles, and as a feedstock for ammonia and methanol, which are used in fertilisers, shipping and elsewhere. The department encouraged coastal areas to explore using offshore wind to produce hydrogen, a still nascent production method. The document also called for using renewables to p...

By Somini Sengupta  and  Brad Plumer ,  The New York Times.  ' Excerpt: As the United States  torpedoes climate action  and Europe  struggles to realize its green ambitions , a surprising shift is taking hold in many large, fast-growing economies where a majority of the world’s people live. Countries like Brazil, India, and Vietnam are rapidly expanding solar and wind power. Poorer countries like Ethiopia and Nepal are leapfrogging over gasoline-burning cars to battery-powered ones. Nigeria, a petrostate, plans to  build its first solar-panel manufacturing plant . Morocco is creating a battery hub to supply European automakers. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has electrified more than half of its bus fleet in recent years. Key to this shift is the world’s new renewable energy superpower: China. Having  saturated its own market  with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungr...

By Max Bearak , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Fatih Birol... has led out of obscurity over the past decade, the International Energy Agency [IEA]. ...Mr. Birol likes to joke that he is “the world’s most boring man.” He certainly exudes a kind of bureaucratic plainness. But he has also deftly led the I.E.A. through a decade during which energy has re-emerged as a geopolitical weapon. The debate over how to address climate change is upending economic and diplomatic relations around the world — right as the Trump administration works to reverse a global push for a transition to renewable energy by producing, consuming and exporting as much fossil fuel as it can. Mr. Birol, for his part, has repeatedly offered the fossil fuel industry a kind of “adapt or fail” warning, particularly as solar power grows at a pace that even the I.E.A. underestimated. ...The organization’s members, mostly Western countries, have increasingly turned to it for guidance, even if the I.E.A. has occasionall...

By Adele Peters , FastCompany.  Excerpt: Most climate reports are bleak. Temperatures are soaring. Sea levels are rising. Companies are missing—or abandoning—their emissions targets. But a  new report  from the nonprofit Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) looks at the surprising amount of progress that’s happened since the Paris climate agreement 10 years ago. Renewable energy has grown faster than every major forecast predicted in 2015. There’s now four times as much solar power as the International Energy Agency (IEA) expected 10 years ago. Last year alone, the world installed  553 gigawatts  of solar power...which is 1,500% more than the IEA had projected. Investors are now pouring twice as much into renewables as into fossil fuels. More than 1 in 5 new cars sold worldwide today is  an EV ; a decade ago, that number was fewer than 1 in 100. ...the world is on track to reach 100 million  EVs  by 2028. Dozens of countries have net-zero...

By Prabhat Ranjan Mishra , Interesting Engineering.  Excerpt: A new energy storage system for high-rise buildings has been introduced in Canada. Designed by University of Waterloo researchers, the solid gravity energy storage system is claimed to be suitable for storing renewable energy. The system combines façade-mounted PV panels, small rooftop wind turbines, Li-Ion batteries, and a rope-hoist-based gravity energy storage (GS)....  Full article at https://interestingengineering.com/energy/canada-solid-gravity-energy-storage-buildings .

By Michelle Lewis , Elektrek.  Excerpt: Rondo Energy has begun commercial operations of what it says is the world’s largest industrial heat battery – a 100 MWh system now operating at a Holmes Western Oil facility in California. Powered entirely by an onsite solar array, the system supplies constant high-pressure steam and heat to the plant, demonstrating how renewable energy can directly power heavy industry. ...During the day, the off-grid solar array charges the Rondo Heat Battery, and the battery delivers stored heat 24/7. After 10 weeks of daily operation, Rondo says the system has met every performance target, achieving over 97% round-trip efficiency and operating at temperatures above 1,000 °C (1,832 °F). The 100 MWh unit provides the same volume of heat as 10,000 household heating systems....  Full article at https://electrek.co/2025/10/16/worlds-largest-industrial-heat-battery-is-online-and-solar-powered/ .

By Antonio Piemontese , Wired.  Excerpt: Speaking by video  at the UN Climate Summit in New York last week,  China's  president Xi Jinping laid out his country's  climate  ambitions. While the stated goals may not have been aggressive as some environmentalists would like, Xi at least reaffirmed China's green commitment. “Despite some countries going against the trend, the international community should stay on the right track, maintain unwavering confidence, unwavering action, and undiminished efforts,” he said. Any reference to Donald Trump and the United States was surely intended (though not explicit). ...Xi Jinping's speech included a commitment to reach 3,600 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind and solar capacity by 2035, six times the country's 2020 figures. This is already the leading country in terms of installed renewable power, and a giant on the technology front as well, with universities churning out environmental and climate tech research at full ...