US utilities generated a record amount of energy from renewable sources last year, even as the Trump administration implemented a range of policies to stymie green energy. Some 1,162 terrawatt-hours of the country’s electricity was generated from renewable sources in 2025, a 10% increase over the prior year, according to federal data released this week. That represents 26% of all US electricity made — enough to power about 108 million US homes for a year.
Bloomberg Green Daily e-mail
Next we need to double that twice more, and add a bit more for growth in demand, including AI data centers. We need a law that their owners have to install more than enough renewables to run their computers, before any of them can be switched on. Also enough industrial heat pump capacity so they don’t need local water for cooling, also fully powered before they are allowed to fire up the computers.
Cooling pipes at a Google data center in Douglas County, Georgia.
The Good News
In the past, forests around the world were cut down on a massive scale. We lost some of the world’s richest ecosystems.
In recent decades, the picture has become more complex. Deforestation has not ended, but it is no longer happening everywhere. Since 1990, some regions have continued to lose large areas of forest, while others have slowed this long-run trend — and even reversed it.
Deforestation has been particularly large in South America and Africa. At the same time, the forested area has expanded in Europe, North and Central America, and large parts of Asia.
These gains show that deforestation is not inevitable. When pressure on land falls, forests can return.
🌏🌴🌳⛰️🌳🌍🌲⛰️🌲🌐
and
Good Sunday morning for gnus shelterers & thank you 2thanks for 69 People Powered pips.. my faves are all of noping out from ICE & AI & data centers & all of the rest..
Climate Scientists Are Fighting Back Against Trump newrepublic.com/...
the Trump administration has withdrawn from global scientific leadership, shrunk the federal scientific workforce, and sought to defund climate research.
But the scientific community is fighting back.
When it first became apparent that the U.S. was withdrawing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a coalition of U.S. academic institutions
worked with AGU to form the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC.
As a result, despite the U.S. government withdrawal, the IPCC has a full complement of scientists participating in this cycle.
When the Trump administration shut down the Sixth National Climate Assessment, AGU and the American Meteorological Society launched a cross-journal U.S. Climate Collection to strengthen the foundations for future assessments
Scientists are also mobilizing to counter the administration’s misinformation
preserve environmental data and maintain climate services abandoned by the federal government.
🎩 2thanks
We are breaking through.
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China promises the “holy grail” of electric vehicles in 2026: an Exeed with a solid-state battery that would exceed 1,500 km (932 miles) and, according to the company, withstand temperatures as low as -30°C (-22°F) - ECOticias.com www.ecoticias.com/en/china-pro...
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— Mark (@ferl67.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:04 PM
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"Nearly all BEV owners surveyed (96%) indicated they would consider leasing another BEV for their next car—underscoring the staying power of the all-electric market even amid slowing U.S. demand and the rollback of federal policies that favor the powertrains."
news.dealershipguy.com/p/bev-owner-...
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— Ryan Katz-Rosene, PhD (@ryankatzrosene.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 11:24 AM
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This is what capital working for communities looks like.
Solar panels on schools → energy savings → stronger education funding.
Financial returns and climate returns don’t have to compete.
🌍📊
#ESG #ImpactInvesting #CleanEnergy
electrek.co/2026/02/25/t...
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— Alex Papadopoulos (@egeasri.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 4:37 PM
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Maersk Offshore Wind takes delivery of next-generation WTIV from Seatrium | Shipyard news
https://www.europesays.com/dk/31309/
The Singapore-headquartered shipyard expert Seatrium Limited (Seatrium) has announced the delivery of the next-generation wind turbine installation vessel…
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— eu-dk.bsky.social (@eu-dk.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:45 PM
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About $50 million worth of solar panels will appear on Maryland Department of Transportation parking lots and brownfields in coming years, paid for with money from a state renewable energy fund that has been in the news recently.
marylandmatters.org/2026/03/01/s...
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— Maryland Matters (@marylandmatters.org) March 2, 2026 at 7:29 PM
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#Geothermal is getting attention from oil and gas regions because it uses the same drilling skills and equipment, but produces #CleanPower from heat underground⚡The idea: turn fossil-fuel know-how into a cleaner energy future while keeping workers and communities involved in the transition 🛠️🌱.
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— Whoa 🤯 in Slow-Mo (@0lsi.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 8:15 AM
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Heat pump sales up 11% on the back of German market revival: Heat pump sales across Europe experienced an 11% increase, largely driven by a significant revival in the German market. These highly efficient electrical systems are being promoted as a way for consumers to… https://ranked.news/254619?u=b
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— Ranked News (@rankednews.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 12:02 PM
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Balcony solar is taking state legislatures by storm.
In more than half of U.S. states, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that would boost adoption of DIY solar systems. #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #GlobalWarming
grist.org/buildings/ba...
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— Climate News Now (@climatenewsnow.bsky.social) March 1, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Global Warming Catastrophes
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Natural Gas Price Spike Reminds Again!
Natural gas prices spike about 30% in EU.
EU's economy and security is at risk as long as gas burning is important to generating electricity and heating homes.
Moving from gas to zero-carbon generation and heat pumps is vital for EU! #energysky
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— John Hanger (@jrfhanger.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 5:20 PM
Bloomberg Green Daily e-mail
Go fish, sustainably
Fished from abundant, well-managed stock off the coast of Spain and France, Patagonia’s canned Atlantic mackerel was once the epitome of sustainability.
But as warmer oceans sent fish north, the species became overfished, so the company had to track down a new source. After a months-long mackerel absence, it’s now selling a different species found in South Pacific waters off Chile, where stocks have bounced back.
No New Nukes
Iran wants to enrich uranium to build nuclear power plants. This is intensely stupid, for all of the usual reasons. They have vast solar potential, and should get on with it. Then, among other things, they can apply some of that power to desalination in order to supply fresh water to Tehran, rather than planning to move the entire city. But our authoritarians and their authoritarians would rather preen and posture and rave about national sovereignty than do anything useful for anybody. See my post tomorrow on The Fog of Warmongering for major pieces of this puzzle.
China’s Advanced Nuclear Efforts Are Pushing Frontiers
As of early 2026, China operates 58 nuclear reactors (about 56.4 GW installed)—second only to the U.S. by number of operating reactors—and has 33 additional units (more than 35 GW) under construction. By comparison, only 10 years ago, China operated 34 reactors (about 27 GW)—less than half of today’s fleet—and relied on foreign reactor technology, and had no indigenous advanced fuel cycle capability.
Project planners are now moving to accelerate the program, and their reported next step is a 100-MWth thorium MSR demonstration reactor targeted for 2035. Commercial thorium MSRs are envisioned by approximately 2040 for applications in carbon-free heat and hydrogen production.
If we can “burn up” leftover uranium and plutonium in MSRs, they might be worth the extra expense. Otherwise, as power sources, fuggedaboudit.
Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor: First In-Reactor Breeding Confirmation.
China achieved a significant fuel cycle milestone with its TMSR-LF1 thorium molten-salt reactor—a 2-MWth prototype built by the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The reactor reached first criticality on Oct. 11, 2023, and achieved full power by June 2024. In October 2024, SINAP scientists performed the world’s first addition of thorium fuel to a working molten-salt reactor (MSR), creating a platform for thorium-uranium fuel cycle research unavailable elsewhere. And one year later, in November 2025, SINAP announced that TMSR-LF1 had successfully bred uranium-233 from thorium, providing the first experimental data on thorium fuel conversion in an operating reactor.
Denial and Obstruction vs. Resistance and $$Real Money$$™
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Kind of mad that Cuba isn't covered in solar panels and batteries. Cheap oil from Venezuela probably more of a curse than a blessing over the past few years. Spend $4bn a year on fuel imports when $20 billion would sort them out according to Gemini. Broke, so would need China to spot them the cash.
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— Simon Jeffrey (@simonjeffrey.bsky.social) March 2, 2026 at 2:23 PM
Bloomberg Green Daily e-mail: A Trump-backed Ohio gas plant would be the US’s biggest polluter
Heatmap Daily [paywalled]: Utility CEOs Can’t Stop Talking About Affordability
Utilities have been requesting a lot of rate increases — some $31 billion in 2025, according to the energy policy group PowerLines, more than double the amount requested the year before. At the same time, those rate increases have helped push electricity prices up over 6% in the last year, while overall prices rose just 2.4%.
Since when did utility executives and the Wall Street analysts who follow them care so much about affordability? You might be asking that question after this quarter’s round of earnings call, during which utility CEOs sometimes sounded like consumer advocates in how often they talked about the importance of affordable electricity.
So why, then, do they keep building and contracting for above-market-price energy boondoggles—nuclear and gas, especially? Could it have something to do with CEO salary and bonus increases?
A Different Level of Idiocy
How Trump’s War Could Destabilize the Global Energy Market
Oil prices are already spiking.
Resources
🎩 GoodNewsRoundup
Want to focus on the ENVIRONMENT:
