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Big battery signs 20-year service deal to meet its market and regulatory obligations, including the requirements of federal Labor's Capacity Investment Scheme.

The post Big battery seals lifetime service deal as it sizes up to meet market and regulatory demands appeared first on Renew Economy.

The climate wars are back: On one side of politics there is no sign they will act on the science, or even sound economics. The shadow boxing is done with. Now it's a pitched battle.

The post As Australia votes for landmark UN climate resolution, Coalition urges fossil industry to “bare its knuckles” appeared first on Renew Economy.

Chinese power giant Sungrow unveils a series of new storage and micro-grid technologies, including a scaled up battery product that can deliver 1 GWh in 12 days.

The post Miners, microgrids, EVs and other loads: New inverter technologies take battery storage to new markets appeared first on Renew Economy.

Regulator warns that the complete lack of policies to guide this state's customer transition away from gas is creating uncertainty that could drive up costs to consumers.

The post How Australia’s most advanced renewables state has dropped the ball on the gas network death spiral appeared first on Renew Economy.

First of its kind financing platform has room for more giant solar and battery hybrids, now the most readily accessible tech for big energy users wanting to clean up.

The post Largest solar-battery financing deal just the tip of the iceberg, as bankers pile into fashionable hybrids appeared first on Renew Economy.

As President Trump’s Department of Transportation encourages American motorists to get in their cars and drive away from their communities to celebrate the nation’s birthday, one advocate is calling on would-be holiday drivers to stay put and deepen their connections to their neighbors — by closing their street to cars and throwing a party.

Nonprofit Block Party USA recently launched its “American Summer” campaign to inspire communities across the country to organize at least 250 block parties between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with an emphasis on the Fourth of July.

Timed to honor the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 1776, this push could catalyze not only interpersonal connections, but an overdue conversation about our country’s divisions — and the role that neighborhoods can play in bringing us back together.

“With America 250 coming, there’s so much polarization, and people are really suffering,” said Vanessa Elias, the group’s founder. “It is affecting our mental health; we’re feeling divided and disappointed. And when we look at our history, we have become so independent and individualistic that we’ve lost this sense of community.”

Recommended How Highways Rend Our Social Fabric — and the Challenge of Mending It Streetsblog March 11, 2025

A self-described “mental health activist, parent coach, and block party expert,” Elias launched the campaign out of a deep belief that in-person interaction among neighbors is an essential ingredient for a healthy life, healthy kids and even a healthy democracy.

She founded her organization after one of her local legislators spoke out about the experience of being harassed by a constituent online, only to have a far more positive experience with the same constituent in person.

“That was just a light bulb moment for me,” Elias says. “We need block parties; we need face-to-face connection with random people in our immediate proximity.”

Recommended Car Harms Monday: Cars Make Us More Lonely Mike Lydon June 9, 2025

In human-centered communities, of course, block parties can be a naturally occurring phenomenon.

When we design our roads to treat motorists as simply members of a broader transportation ecosystem — rather than those roads’ exclusive users — we open up space for spontaneous barbecues and pop-up porch concerts, whether or not anyone has organized a formal gathering. This choice also encourages more casual social interactions between neighbors, which studies show are statistically more likely to happen in walkable neighborhoods, too.

Elias says her block party proposal can adapt to more car-dependent places, with gatherings in rural driveways or meetups in parks. But in an ideal world, she thinks everyone who wants to should be able to step right outside their door and into a true community, rather than getting in a car to go find it.

“Part of the work that I do, is to help people understand how they don’t need a perfect cul-de-sac where they can close the road … That said, I would prefer it be rooted in place, and rooted in the area that people are living,” she added. “Rather than finding a pretty park eight miles from where everybody lives, [the ideal block party would] bring people together as close as possible to where they’re living — and I think some communities make it really easy for that to happen.”

Recommended Five Things Missing In The Built Environment For Families With Young Children Barry Greene Jr. June 16, 2023

Elias acknowledged that only 6.8 percent of the U.S. population live in walkable neighborhoods, which means ideal block party sites can be hard to find.

And even within those neighborhoods, some will still find it difficult to secure permits to close streets to cars, or to rally neighbors who barely say hello to one another on the way to check the mail. She stressed that, in an era of social media isolation and deep political division, the built environment is far from the only reason why we don’t always connect.

Despite those steep odds, though, Elias argued the humble block party can be a critical first “drop” that ripples out across a whole community, building social connections that grow and deepen over time — particularly for people who are too young to drive. She emphasized that block parties encourage “free play” for children, which “can make children happier, better problem-solvers, and more energized to pursue learning and develop deep interests.”

No matter why communities gather, though, Elias said the best way to celebrate our country this summer may not be traveling to visit our national treasures, but to make treasured memories in our own neighborhoods — and maybe, to forge the coalitions we need to make livable streets and social cohesion the neighborhood norm.

“Whether you’re six or 106, it’s something that is accessible to you — to meet other people, where you belong,” she added.

Visit BlockPartyUSA.org for more tools and resources to throw a block party in your community.

TORONTO — “Build Canada Strong” is a central mantra of the federal government’s plans to bolster Canada’s economy in a rapidly changing world, with new housing and infrastructure key to Canada’s nation-building efforts. But all this construction poses a problem: the production of building materials can be a huge source of emissions. 

Thankfully, there are solutions that can reduce this downside, at little or no extra cost—while also supporting Canadian industry, as a new report, Build Canada Clean, from Clean Energy Canada reveals.

The report, which features case studies from across the country—from apartment buildings to roads to wastewater facilities—finds that lower-carbon construction materials can generally be procured at no or marginal cost increases, while simple design changes can further minimize cost and emissions. One case study of an apartment building in Quebec, for example, found that design changes and lower-carbon materials could cut construction emissions by 30% while reducing overall construction costs by 12%.

What’s more, Canadian manufacturers are already producing many of the lower-carbon alternatives required, such as steel produced in electric arc furnaces, concrete that uses industrial byproducts to replace cement, and reclaimed asphalt. Supporting this kind of construction presents a unique opportunity for Canada to build its market at a time when our key trade partners, like the EU, are actively seeking cleaner products.

Governments are key to ensuring we seize this opportunity. They are big builders and by requiring lower-carbon materials and design—an approach known as “Buy Clean”—they can create a strong demand signal. The federal government has already taken some steps to reduce carbon in its building projects, and has also recently introduced a “Buy Canadian” approach. Expanded Buy Clean policies sitting alongside Buy Canadian ones would allow us to support domestic producers while also incentivizing our industries to become more climate-competitive in a global trade environment increasingly prioritizing or requiring cleaner materials.

Beyond “Buy Clean,” some simple regulatory changes can make a big difference, as the report elaborates. There are many different codes and standards for infrastructure construction across the country, some of which needlessly restrict the use of lower-carbon materials or design practices. Where flexibility does exist to use more recycled or other lower-carbon materials, it isn’t always made use of—something that could be addressed with better procurement guidance.

As we build more projects, we have the opportunity to avoid locking in huge amounts of damaging emissions—all while cutting costs for developers and taxpayers alike. So while we “Build Canada Strong,” let’s also “Build Canada Clean.”

KEY FACTS

• The construction sector contributed over 8% of Canada’s total emissions in 2018. And that was at less than a third of the housing starts Canada actually needs. 
• For efficient, electrified buildings, the emissions associated with material production and construction, known as “embodied carbon,” usually accounts for a larger portion of lifecycle carbon emissions than those from operation, like heating and cooling.
• The global low-carbon construction materials market is expected to be worth US$579 billion in 2032, with trade partners, including the EU, increasingly looking for clean materials. 
• Through nine roadway case studies, we show that lifetime emissions reductions of between 17% and 31% could be achieved while reducing the per-metre cost of the roads by up to 16%. 
• A study of an apartment building in Quebec found that making just two changes to the building design and replacing materials with lower-carbon equivalents would reduce embodied emissions by 30% while reducing overall construction costs by 12%.
• Choosing lower-carbon material options for water infrastructure can reduce the emissions of stormwater and wastewater infrastructure with marginal cost impacts.

RESOURCES

Report | Build Canada Clean

The post Amid Canada’s massive housing and infrastructure build-out, a few changes can limit climate impact at little or no cost: report appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

• The House version of a new infrastructure funding bill, dubbed BUILD America 250, is getting mixed-to-negative reviews (Streetsblog USA).
  • The Eno Center for Transportation has a detailed breakdown of the bill’s language.
  • The Natural Resources Defense Council doesn’t like a new $130 fee on electric vehicles or the elimination of funding for chargers.
  • Democratic senators are also opposed to the EV fee. (E&E News)
  • The bill maintains the car-dominated status quo by raising funding for highways and cutting funding for rail and transit, compared to the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure act, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. (The Equation)
  • The Rail Passengers Association notes that it provides more funding for transit than such bills usually do, but zeroes out funding specifically for rail.
  • In addition, the bill would require congressional approval for any Amtrak restructuring. (Trains)
  • It also requires the federal government to write regulations for driverless commercial trucks. (Freight Waves)
• The EPA announced plans to delay the Biden administration’s stronger vehicle emissions standards, and possibly reconsider them entirely. (Inside Climate News)
• The Austin Transit Partnership has started pre-construction work on the city’s first light rail line. (KXAN)
• Oregon voters rejected a proposal to raise the state gas tax, probably because the price of gas is so high already. (Associated Press)
• New Jersey will not require insurance for lower-speed e-bikes that don’t have a throttle, just the ones that function more like motorcycles. (NJ.com)
• SEPTA will boost service on several Philadelphia transit lines for the World Cup. (Philly Voice)
• A new branch of Montreal’s REM train is bringing transit to an underserved area. (CBC)
• A candidate for Seoul mayor has plans to build seven new rail lines by 2037. (Moovit)
• Transport for London hired three contractors to modernize the city’s tram network. (Safer Highways)

Children bear the consequences of today’s major crises more than most, yet their concerns and experiences remain largely invisible in political life. A childist revolution calls for transforming the political space to cultivate a deeper sense of our social and natural interdependence – including fully democratising democracies through ageless suffrage. 

This article is part of the Green European Journal’s upcoming print edition on demographic futures, out in early June. Subscribe now and get it delivered straight to your door.

Democracies face crises when populations lose confidence in their ability to address fundamental concerns – as is usually the case in periods of rapid industrialisation, runaway inequality, economic depression, mass migration, and war. During such times, they often backslide into authoritarian appeals, but tend eventually to evolve new democratic norms and practices. 

The worldwide crisis of democracy today revolves around issues that centrally concern one of the most disempowered social groups: the third of humanity who are children. It is children above all who face the greatest impacts of climate change, both immediately and in the long term. Children in rich and poor countries alike suffer disproportionate poverty because of global neoliberalism. Young people die in outsized numbers from civilian-targeted modern warfare and terrorism. And they are hit hardest by the ways that new digital technologies manipulate information and foster technological addiction. 

However, children remain largely invisible in political life. Indeed, it is this very invisibility that keeps children’s issues at the margins of democratic policymaking.  

The rise of childism 

The past couple of decades have seen the rise of a movement among academics and activists to respond to these democratic and childhood realities under the umbrella of childism. Childism is a critical approach to societies similar to feminism, anti-racism, decolonialism, and the like. It seeks to empower children and acknowledge their concerns and experiences by transforming historically ingrained assumptions and structures. Its aim is to reconstruct social norms to make them genuinely age-inclusive. 

The word “childism” was coined in the early 2000s in academic literature rooted in the then-emerging field of childhood studies, which seeks to understand children’s agency and experiences as children rather than as developing adults. In the 1990s, the term was used briefly in literary studies to refer to a practice of reading like a child. More recently, it has also been used in a negative sense, akin to sexism and racism. But the predominant meaning in scholarship – and now also in social activism – is in its positive sense of children’s empowerment. 

The central problem that childism addresses is a deeply rooted adultism: the assumption that the adult is the measure of the human. Adultism is the often forgotten side of patriarchy, the historical power of the “pater” or father, which is not only gendered but also aged. Like sexism, adultism is deeply embedded in our histories, cultures, and languages. Adultism in particular asserts a binary opposition between supposedly rational and independent adults on the one hand, and supposedly irrational and dependent children on the other. In this way, it divides social relations in everything from families and communities to human rights and law. 

 Adultism is the often forgotten side of patriarchy, the historical power of the “pater” or father, which is not only gendered but also aged.

Children themselves are already practising an implicit childism. Young climate protesters are demanding age inclusivity in environmental policy. Child labour union activists are calling for recognition for non-adult work. Youth are fighting for schools free of gun violence. Transgender children are pushing their communities to change how they think about gender identity. Children and youth in the dozens of countries with child and youth parliaments are pressing for children’s perspectives on safe streets, access for people with disabilities, and education reform. 

Children’s suffrage 

As marginalised groups over history have found, however, the ultimate right to political inclusion is the right to vote. Suffrage does not solve all problems, but it does confer on those possessing it the status of first-class citizens with equal political dignity. It is the right to participate in the process of forming rights. This is why non-landowners, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and women fought so hard to achieve it. And it is why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights call, without any type of qualification, for “universal and equal suffrage”.  

Children have been fighting for suffrage since at least the 1990s. They have done so in campaigns and legal action by groups like We Want the Vote and KRÄTZÄ in Germany, the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) in the US, Young Pirates of Europe (YPE), and Green Youth. Adults have joined them with academic and policy support, including through initiatives like the Children’s Voting Colloquium, Amnesty International UK, the Freechild Institute, the National Association of Large Families , and the Child Rights International Network (CRIN). What is more, children and adults have sued governments for ageless suffrage in Germany, California and Massachusetts in the United States, Sweden, and Canada.

The childist argument for ageless suffrage is that it is necessary for the wellbeing of both children and democracies. Children themselves would finally have their lives and perspectives taken just as seriously by policymakers, whose jobs would no longer rely solely on pressure from adults. And democracies would benefit from the full range of the people’s ideas, thus making better-informed decisions. 

A matter of competence?  

The main objection to children’s suffrage has historically been that children lack voting competence. People under the age of maturity are thought to be deficient in democratic thinking skills, knowledge, and independence, and to be too open to manipulation. And they are presumed to lack the experience and understanding needed to contribute to difficult decisions about complex political matters like war, health policy, and immigration. 

But these presumptions misunderstand both democracy and childhood. Working backwards from the aims of democracy, voting competence consists in the ability to give voice to political views. The purpose of democratic voting is not to place decisions in the hands of those with certain types of knowledge, but to hold elected representatives accountable to the people impacted by their decisions. Anyone should be included in the vote who wishes to have a say in what policymakers may do. 

Barring children from voting is, in reality, a form of systemic discrimination. It holds them to a standard of voting competence that is not applied to the rest of the population.

If voting competence is properly understood, children have much more of it – and adults much less – than commonly thought. It is hard to deny democratic capacities to the millions of children who march for climate change policies, fight against racism, or participate in children’s parliaments, child labour unions, or any number of other political organisations. Children worldwide discuss politics at the dinner table, read or watch the news, and hold diverse opinions about current events. There is no magical stage of neurological development at which the capacity to have political views suddenly arises. It is a general capacity of anyone aware of their larger world. 

This capacity of children to participate in democratic life is already legally recognised in Articles 12, 13, and 15 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These guarantee children the rights to “express [their] views freely in all matters affecting the child”, “freedom of expression” without unnecessary restriction, and “freedom of association”. All of these rights are violated when children are banned from exercising their democratic capacities. 

Likewise, adults exhibit very wide ranges of democratic skill, knowledge, and susceptibility to influence. Adults have the right to vote regardless of ignorance, thoughtlessness, and openness to manipulation. They retain this right even if they suffer from severe cognitive impairment, mental disability, or dementia. History shows that adults frequently make terrible voting decisions. Furthermore, no adult has a deep understanding of all the matters they must vote upon, from economic statistics to military capacities, health innovations, top secret information, legal precedents, and much else. 

Barring children from voting is, in reality, a form of systemic discrimination. It holds them to a standard of voting competence that is not applied to the rest of the population. The European Court of Human Rights defines discrimination as “differential treatment in comparable situations without an objective or reasonable justification”. Adult-only voting excludes children as a class of citizens for reasons outside the objective requirements of voting itself. 

Stronger democracies 

But the most important reason to give children the right to vote is that it would improve life for children and adults and strengthen democracies.  

Children themselves would live in political environments that are required to take their interests into account centrally instead of peripherally. Currently, they cannot vote politicians out of office, which means authorities are not truly incentivised to take children’s experiences and concerns seriously. Children may be objects of democratic beneficence, but like adults, they also need to be treated as subjects with democratic agency.  

If children could vote, they would likely pressure politicians, for example, to finally take the climate emergency seriously, fight child poverty, regulate digital media, invest in meaningful education reform, attend to lifelong healthcare, and create safer streets and greener spaces. They would also have greater recourse to fight social discrimination, such as social media bans, age curfews, exclusion from divorce proceedings, corporal punishment, school discipline, issues with access to medical care, and much more. 

Granting children the right to vote would also benefit adults. Everyone would gain from better climate policies. Parents would be helped by children’s greater economic support. Teachers would be empowered by education policies that better respond to children’s actual lives and experiences. Doctors would find greater resources for child healthcare and research. And business leaders would hire from a better-educated workforce.  

Moreover, democracy itself would be strengthened by becoming more fully responsive to the people’s actual lives. Policymakers would find themselves equally beholden to all instead of just some of their constituents. Democratic leaders could make clearer decisions with – so to speak – a third more pixels added to their policymaking screen. And democracies would make choices about war, spending, and judicial reform in more inclusively informed ways. 

What is more, children’s suffrage could provide the needed antidote to today’s slide of democracies into authoritarianism. The right to vote for all would undercut the assumption that some are natural rulers over others. And it would eliminate the problem of citizens spending the first quarter of their lives being told that their views do not count, which opens citizens to simplistic authoritarian appeals. Instead of looking to father figures, democracies would more likely turn to broad-minded defenders of human rights. 

Children may be objects of democratic beneficence, but like adults, they also need to be treated as subjects with democratic agency.  

Systemic inclusion 

Childism calls for not only new understandings of voting rights but also new electoral practices. Suffrage movements typically shift how voting actually takes place. We have come a long way from landowning men choosing representatives in taverns.  

A good first step is to lower the voting age. In countries that have lowered the national voting age to 16, children have been shown to turn out in higher numbers for elections than young adults and to retain higher voting rates into adulthood. They have also moved policymakers to include more child-friendly interests. However, from a childist perspective, lowering voting ages does not go far enough. It still only enfranchises children who are thought to have achieved adult-like competencies, whereas genuine democracies need to move beyond adultism. 

There are several different proposals for ageless voting rights, but my own is for what I call proxy-claim voting. Under this proposition, all citizens would have a proxy vote from birth to death, which can be used by their legal guardian – a parent, caretaker, or next of kin. This proxy vote would most likely be used on behalf of infants, young children, cognitively impaired children and adults, adults with significant disabilities or health issues, and elderly persons with dementia. But all citizens would, at the same time, have the right to claim the exercise of their vote on their own behalf. Whenever a citizen desired to vote independently, regardless of their age or condition, they could claim their right to do so. 

Some might object that a proxy-claim right to vote would advantage larger families, but in reality, it would advantage the children themselves in these families who deserve their own equal representation. Others might find proxy voting fundamentally undemocratic, yet it already exists in most countries for impaired (or even just travelling) adults, so why not also for the youngest children? Some do not think voting is all that powerful anyway, but is it fair or just to ban one group even from the choice to participate? 

Childism calls for children’s systemic inclusion and empowerment. It suggests, just like first-wave feminism, that the right to vote is a fundamental human right. But suffrage is only a first step. Childism sets in motion a systemic critique of societies’ adultistic biases across law, policy, culture, and family. It insists that children are not second-class citizens but central to infusing societies with humanity. 

If consumers use batteries mainly to reduce exposure, what does that mean for a grid that increasingly needs flexible participation?

The post When the grid and home batteries teach consumers to withdraw from the market appeared first on Renew Economy.

A Queensland company is proposing a small solar-battery, with sheep grazing under the panels, saying the landowner wants to use land too barren to farm.

The post Farmer seeks solar: Queensland developer says PV plans will help rejuvenate barren land appeared first on Renew Economy.

Australia is betting on millions of household energy devices to help run the grid, but what happens if they can’t properly talk to each other?

The post SwitchedOn podcast: Consumer energy devices aren’t talking to each other – and it’s a problem appeared first on Renew Economy.

The Lock the Gate Alliance has today requested an internal review of the Queensland government’s decision to approve a gas development, saying it failed to consider or mitigate human rights and environmental impacts when approving the first stage of a major gas expansion in the Western Downs region. 

The mining industry is burning even more diesel for the same amount of production as they have to dig digger for hard to cut coal, and lack of action on electric options.

The post Miners are burning a lot more diesel than four years ago, just for same amounts of now hard-to-get coal appeared first on Renew Economy.

• This consultation is open until 15 June 2026
• Comments can be submitted in English, French and Spanish

The High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an open consultation on the V0 draft of its report, Preserving, Strengthening and Promoting Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems and Traditional Practices for Sustainable Food Systems. The consultation is open from 15 May to 15 June 2026.

This draft was prepared following the 2024 consultation on the scope of the report, which received 78 contributions, including a submission from the CSIPM. The final report will be presented during the 54th plenary session of the CFS in October 2026, and it will contribute to the CFS policy workstream on the same topic. 

About the HLPE-FSN consultation

The outcomes of this consultation will support the HLPE-FSN to further develop the draft, which will undergo peer review before a final approval by the drafting team  and the  Steering Committee . More information on the different stages of the process is available here.

Questions guiding the e-consultation

1. The report proposes a working definition of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems. Do you have any observations on this definition? 
2. The report introduces a conceptual framework informed by key principles established in previous HLPE-FSN reports (HLPE, 2020) and grounded on the six dimensions of food security. The conceptual framework highlights the importance of relationality, values and territories to understand Indigenous Peoples’ food systems. Do you think the framework captures the key elements to guide policy-making aimed at improving the contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems to food security and nutrition? Do you have any other comments? 
3. Data on Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are limited. What are additional trends and data, especially capturing impacts on food security and nutrition and inequalities/distribution issues affecting Indigenous Peoples, that could be included in the report? Please provide full references.
4. Are there any other issues concerning Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and food security and nutrition that have not been sufficiently covered in the draft report? Are topics under- or over-represented in relation to their importance?
5. Are there other references, publications, or different kind of knowledges, especially Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, which should be considered?
6. Could you suggest case studies and success stories from countries that were able to preserve, strengthen and promote Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems? The HLPE-FSN is especially interested in examples that contribute to balance geographical representation in the report and that address issues related to all forms of malnutrition.
7. From your perspective what are the areas on which the HLPE-FSN could make recommendations in its report?
8. Do you have any additional comments you would like to share with the HLPE-FSN? 

How to participate

Written contributions can be submitted before 15 June, 2026 using the template provided by the HLPE-FSN.

Contribute to the CSIPM collective submission

The CSIPM Working Group on Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems will facilitate the development of a collective submission to this consultation.

We warmly invite CSIPM Participants to contribute. If you are not yet part of the Working Group and would like to participate, please fill in this form and contact the CSIPM Secretariat  at cso4cfs@gmail.com.

HLPE- FSN DRAFT V0 REPORT ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ FOOD AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

• Further information on the consultation is available on the HLPE-FSN website
• Learn more about the HLPE-FSN publication cycle
• Read the CSIPM submission on the scope of the report.

The post HLPE-FSN opens consultation on draft report on Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems appeared first on CSIPM.

Last summer, I  traveled to Berlin for a study abroad program. I intended to learn about the city’s communication efforts to continue cultural memory. Little did I know I was about to get a crash course in public transit, a lesson that didn’t fully set in until I got back home. Upon my return to California, I was initially overjoyed to be out and about, but that was until I realized that to go anywhere in my city, I would need to take my car. By contrast, the tram in Germany, not even a minute away from my hostel, could take me to a nearby coffee shop, a park, and a nearby grocery store.

My car now seemed more like an obstacle than an asset. The studies are clear: public transit benefits a city’s economy, creates community space, and cuts down on millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide. In addition, it offers a mode of transit that is broadly accessible, regardless of socioeconomic status and able-bodiedness, creating an equitable solution to a manufactured issue. We need an attitude shift in America, one that goes against the individualism perpetuated in our society, and understands that protecting the environment is an investment in people and not a financial strain. United States residents need to realize that a car is as much a burden as a convenience. 

A common argument against public transit is that it is expensive to install and maintain. This apprehension towards rail in California is compounded by the fact that our high-speed rail project is nowhere close to completion and has cost way more than previously promised. However, though high-speed rail may not have fulfilled its initial promise, this does not mean public transit is a lost cause in California. In the Bay, especially, the benefit of railroads has been a good case study for the rest of the state and country. And we do not necessarily need to build new rails, but can often just restore and improve old ones. 

Certainly, we don’t need driverless vehicles pushed onto us by billionaires and their corporations; we can’t just “tech” our way out of global warming. In building a renewable future, we need to look towards the past. UC Berkeley News found that the now-electrified Caltrain has already cut 89 percent of carcinogenic black carbon, as well as producing less noise than its diesel counterparts. Next time the Super Bowl brings a great halftime show to San Jose, even fewer people will choose to drive.  

Another real concern that drives people away from public transit is safety and cleanliness. Why expose yourself to the perceived risks of public transit when your sedan has a steel safety bubble? However, investing in public transit decreases this perception. Taking the S-Bahn in Berlin, I felt entirely safe; it was regularly cleaned and always full. Shared commitment and responsibility have the ability to transform our attitude of public transit as a less luxurious option, to a shared community place. If driving in a car severely increases the chances of getting hurt or killed in a crash, and pollution increases our chances of getting killed too, how is the car a more convenient or safe option?

As fuel prices rise, the clear inconveniences of cars may become more apparent. The day when people can once again take a train from Saratoga or Santa Cruz to San Francisco would be the day that I would sell my car. As global temperatures rise, we should look to Germany and draw on past solutions to address modern issues.

***

Kyle Kayhan is a sociology and communication studies student at San Jose State University

The number of new coal-fired power plants built around the world hit a “10-year high” in 2025, even as the global coal fleet generated less electricity, amid a “widening disconnect” in the sector. 

That is according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), which finds that the world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025, the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants.

It adds that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China. 

Yet GEM says that the amount of electricity generated with coal fell by 0.6% in 2025 – with sharp drops in both China and India – as the fuel was displaced by record wind and solar output, among other factors. 

The report notes that there have been previous dips in output from coal power and there could still be ups – as well as downs – in the near term.

For example, nearly 70% of the coal-fired units scheduled to retire globally in 2025 did not do so, due to postponements triggered by the 2022 energy crisis and policy shifts in the US.

However, GEM says that the underlying dynamics for coal power have now fundamentally shifted, as the cost of renewables has fallen and low usage hits coal profitability.

China and India dominate growth

In 2025, coal-capacity growth hit a 10-year high, with 97 gigawatts (GW) of new power plants being added, according to GEM.

(Capacity refers to the potential maximum power output, as measured in GW, whereas generation refers to power actually generated by the assets over a period of time, measured in gigawatt hours, GWh.)

This is the highest level since 2015 when 107GW began operating, as shown in the chart below. This makes 2025 the second-highest level of additions on record. 

Coal-fired power capacity that began operation each year from 2000 to 2025, GW. Source: Global Energy Monitor.

The majority of this growth came from China and India, which added 78GW and 10GW, respectively, against 9GW from all other countries. 

Yet GEM points out that, even as coal capacity in China grew by 6%, the output from coal-fired power plants actually fell 1.2%. This means that each power plant would have been running less often, eroding its profitability. Similarly, capacity in India grew by 3.8%, while generation fell by 2.9%.

China and India had accounted for 87% of new coal-power capacity that came into operation in the first half of 2025. The shift up to 95% in the year as a whole highlights how increasingly just those two countries dominate the sector, GEM says.

Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s global coal plant tracker, said in a statement: 

“In 2025, the world built more coal and used it less. Development has grown more concentrated, too – 95% of coal plant construction is now in China and India, and even they are building solar and wind fast enough to displace it.”

Both China and India saw solar and wind meet most or all of the growth in electricity demand last year. 

Analysis for Carbon Brief last year showed that, in the first six months of 2025 alone, a record 212GW of solar was added in China, helping to make it the nation’s single-largest source of clean-power generation, for example. 

However, the country continues to propose new coal plants. In 2025, a record 162GW of capacity was newly proposed for development or reactivated, according to GEM. This brought the overall capacity under development in the country to more than 500GW. 

China’s 15th “five-year plan”, covering 2026-2030, had pledged to “promote the peaking” of coal use, while a more recent pair of policies introduced stricter controls on local governments’ coal use. 

For its part, in India some 28GW of new coal capacity was newly proposed or reactivated last year, bringing the total under development to 107.3GW and under-construction capacity to 23.5GW.

The Indian government is planning to complete 85GW of new coal capacity in the next seven years, even as clean-energy expansion reaches levels that could cover all of the growth in electricity demand. 

Outside of China and India, GEM says that just 32 countries have new coal plants under construction or under development, down from 38 in 2024. 

Countries that have dropped plans for new coal in 2025 include South Korea, Brazil and Honduras, it says. GEM notes that the latter two mean that Latin America is now free from any new coal-power proposals. 

This means that both electricity generation from coal and the construction of new coal-fired power plants are increasingly concentrated in just a few countries, as the chart below shows.

Top 10 countries for total operating coal power-plant capacity (left) and for newly added capacity (right), GW. Source: Global Energy Monitor.

Indonesia’s coal fleet grew by 7% in 2025 to 61GW, with a quarter of the new capacity tied to nickel and aluminium processing, according to GEM. 

Turkey – which is gearing up to host the COP31 international climate summit in November – has just one coal-plant proposal remaining, down from 70 in 2015. 

The amount of new coal capacity that started to operate in south-east Asia fell for the third year in a row in 2025, according to GEM. 

Countries in south Asia that rely on imported energy are increasingly looking to other technologies to protect themselves from fossil-fuel shocks, such as Pakistan, which is rapidly deploying solar, states the GEM report.

In Africa, plans for new coal capacity are concentrated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, the report shows, with the two countries accounting for two-thirds of planned development in the region.

‘Persistence of policies’

While new coal plants are still being built and even more are under development, GEM notes that the global electricity system is undergoing rapid changes.

Crucially, the growth of cheap renewable energy means that new coal plants do not automatically translate into higher electricity generation from coal.

Without rising output from coal power, building new plants simply results in the coal fleet running less often, further eroding its economics relative to wind and solar power.

Indeed, GEM notes that electricity generation from coal fell globally in 2025. Moreover, a recent report by thinktank Ember found that renewable energy overtook coal in 2025 to become the world’s largest source of electricity.

GEM notes that coal generation may fluctuate in the near term, in particular due to potential increases in demand driven by higher gas prices. 

It adds that gas price shocks, such as the one triggered by the Iran war, can cause temporary reversals in the longer-term shift away from coal.

According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least eight countries announced plans to either increase their coal use or review plans to transition away from coal in the first month of the Iran war. However, a much-discussed “return to coal” is expected to be limited.

GEM’s report highlights that global fossil-fuel shocks can have an impact on the phase out of coal capacity over several years.

In the EU, for example, 69% of planned retirements did not take place in 2025, due to postponements that began in the 2022-23 energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the report. Countries across the bloc chose to retain their coal capacity amid gas supply disruptions and concerns about energy security.

Yet coal-fired power generation in the bloc is now more than 40% below 2022 levels. Again, this highlights that coal capacity does not necessarily translate into electricity generation from coal, with its associated CO2 emissions.

Overall, GEM notes that “repeated exposure to fossil-fuel price volatility is as likely to accelerate the shift toward clean energy as it is to delay it”.

GEM’s Shearer says in a statement: 

“The central challenge heading into 2026 is not the availability of alternatives, but the persistence of policies that treat coal as necessary even as power systems move increasingly beyond it.”

In the US, 59% of planned retirements in 2025 did not happen, according to GEM. This was due to government intervention to keep ageing coal plants online. 

Five coal-power plants have been told to remain online through federal “emergency” orders, for example, even as the coal fleet continues to face declining competitiveness. 

Keeping these plants online has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and helped drive an annual increase in the average US household electricity prices of 7%, according to GEM. 

Despite such measures, Trump has overseen a larger fall in coal-fired power capacity than any other US president, according to Carbon Brief analysis. 

Meanwhile, according to new figures from the US Energy Information Administration, solar and wind both set new records for energy production in 2025.

Despite challenges with policy and wider fossil-fuel impacts, the underlying dynamic has shifted, says GEM, as “clean energy becomes more competitive and widely deployed” around the world. 

It adds that this raises the prospect of “a more sustained decoupling between coal-capacity growth and generation, particularly if clean-energy deployment continues at current rates”.

Analysis: Trump has overseen larger coal decline than any other US president

Coal

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12.02.26

Analysis: Coal power drops in China and India for first time in 52 years after clean-energy records

China energy

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13.01.26

IEA: Declining coal demand in China set to outweigh Trump’s pro-coal policies

Coal

|

17.12.25

Guest post: China and India account for 87% of new coal-power capacity so far in 2025

China energy

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27.08.25

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The Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently released a comprehensive report highlighting actions taken to date to restore the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, along with several policy...

Nebraska State Senators Terrell McKinney & Ashlei Spivey Invite You To Attend: 

A NORTH OMAHA TOWN HALL MEETING

The town hall will feature the Senators’ work this past session and serve as an opportunity for the community to ask questions.

The town hall will also feature a discussion on LB 1111, a data center bill sponsored by Senators McKinney, Spivey and Machaela Cavanaugh, which was also supported by Bold Nebraska, that was incorporated in LB1010 and passed into law. The law holds data centers accountable and provides for transparency that no other state has been able to pass. Bold Founder Jane Kleeb will join the Senators for the data center discussion. 

• WHEN: Thursday, June 11, 2026, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
• WHERE: Nelson Mandela Elementary School, 6316 N. 30th Street, Omaha, NE
• RSVP: Let us know you are coming!

*The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.*

Bold’s Energy Builders Project provides education, training, legal, communications, and organizing support to rural communities that want to see more clean energy built in their towns. BoldEnergyBuilders.us 

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson

The odds are in El Niño’s favor right now.

This natural weather phenomenon, part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, occurs when warmer-than-average water extends throughout most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean just below the surface. That’s happening now. And powerful bursts of westerly wind have pushed immense amounts of warm water eastward, toward the Niño3.4 region where sea surface temperature, along with other atmospheric conditions, is used to assess the state of ENSO.

On May 14, in its monthly ENSO outlook, the NOAA/National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center gave an 82% chance that El Niño will be in place for the period May through July, which implies that it’ll be here within weeks.

How do experts know when El Niño has arrived?

El Niño conditions are declared when the atmosphere and ocean are in sync and the Niño3.4 sea surface temperature is at least 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9°F) warmer than the seasonal average.

But just as hurricanes can and do stray from the “cone of uncertainty” at times, it’s vital to remember that El Niño can do much the same. Preparing for the prototypical outcomes is a smart move, as long as you keep in mind that forecasting the El Niño-Southern Oscillation is more a matter of probabilities than certainties.

NOAA now uses a Relative Oceanic Niño Index, or RONI, in which the Niño3.4 value is adjusted relative to the world’s tropical oceans as a whole; the goal is to keep global warming from smudging the signal of El Niño and La Niña events themselves.

Read: A new and better way to keep tabs on El Niño and La Niña

Nearly all seasonal forecast ensembles used to predict ENSO at agencies around the world now concur that the imminent event is likely to bring Niño3.4 warming of at least 1.5°C, which would push it into the “strong” category. And some of the ensemble averages are now going well above 2°C, even for the adjusted RONI index. That would put it in the ballpark of the biggest El Niño events in the NOAA database going back to 1950.

Individual ensemble members still cover a fairly broad range, with outcomes varying from a weak event to a record-stomping one, but as shown below, they’re about as close to being unanimous on a significant El Niño as you’re likely to see. (This output is mainly using the traditional pre-RONI index, which tends to run slightly hotter on recent El Niño events.)

What’s a ‘super El Niño’ – and will we get one?

Back in 2003, a group of researchers from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, invoked the term “super El Niño” in a Monthly Weather Review paper. They used it to describe events where the Niño3.4 departure from average was at least 3°C. The phrase has since been used more loosely around the world, especially in news articles and social media, but it’s not part of the toolbox of most professional ENSO forecasters.

“While ‘Super El Niño’ is sometimes used informally, it is not a scientific term,” said senior climatologist Felicity Gamble in a statement from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, which avoids the “super” moniker in its products.

The same is true of NOAA, which is going with “weak,” “moderate,” “strong,” and “very strong.” NOAA’s monthly ENSO outlooks now include month-by-month odds that a predicted El Niño event will fall into each of these four brackets. The odds of a “very strong” event peak at 37% in the November-to-January period.

Summing these categories, the odds that we will have El Niño at any strength are now greater than 90% from this summer through winter 2026-27, according to NOAA.

Figure 1. Probabilities from NOAA’s May 14 outlook that the expected El Niño event of 2026-27 will fall into various strength categories during each overlapping three-month period through December-February. El Niño events typically build in northern summer and fall, peak in the winter, and fade by spring. Unlike La Niña, El Niño rarely persists or recurs for two or more years in a row, though that occasionally happens. (Image credit: NOAA/NWS/CPC)

Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services, a California-based forensic meteorologist and former National Weather Service forecaster, began using “very strong” when the 2015-16 event arrived, so he’s happy to see NOAA doing the same. As Null puts it, “Everyone sees a forecast plume that looks like the liftoff of Artemis and goes crazy, and somehow early on attached the ‘super’ superlative to it.”

Does a stronger El Niño event lead to more extreme impacts?

Whether it’s super, very strong, mega, whiz-bang, or something else, the approaching El Niño could certainly land in the uppermost tier of what we’ve seen in recent decades. So does that mean the impacts would be correspondingly intense?

Alas, it’s not that simple.

“A strong El Niño event doesn’t always mean stronger impacts on our weather,” the Australian climatologist Felicia Gamble said in a statement released by that nation’s Bureau of Meteorology. “Sometimes a weak El Niño can lead to significant impacts on Australia’s rainfall and temperature, while a stronger event may have less noticeable impacts.”

ENSO expert Nathaniel Johnson, a meteorologist at NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, noted in an email that a stronger El Niño event does raise the odds of the most prototypical outcomes. However, it’s not the only thing involved.

“In any given season and region, there are many large-scale patterns that help to shape our local weather,” said Johnson. “El Niño is just one of those factors, but it happens to be the most predictable on timescales of months to seasons. If the El Niño event is very strong, then it is more likely that the El Niño influence will dominate over those other, less seasonally predictable factors.”

That said, there are places where a strong El Niño event can lead to distinctly different outcomes than a weak or moderate one. In the eastern tropical Pacific, for example, surface waters – normally chilled by upwelling – are often too cool to support showers and thunderstorms even in moderately strong El Niño conditions. Beyond a certain threshold of strength, though, the normally dry eastern tropical Pacific will warm up enough to support heavy rainfall, Johnson said: “This would essentially indicate a shift of the entire tropical Pacific warm pool to the eastern Pacific, which would immediately impact regions like coastal Ecuador and Peru.”

The very name El Niño, which means the Christ child in Spanish, came from Peruvian fishers who noticed that their anchovy catches – typically some of the world’s largest – took severe hits from unusually warm water during certain years around Christmas. (Earlier this year, Peru’s anchovy fisheries called for a proactive early start to get ahead of the possible El Niño.)

The Galápagos archipelago and its distinctive food chain are also highly vulnerable to the heavy rains and warm waters of a strong El Niño event.

What might we expect with this El Niño event, and where?

El Niño’s impacts occur as the global atmospheric circulation is rearranged by the massive zone of rising, warm air (often as large as the United States) that develops over the eastern tropical Pacific. These impacts can be remarkably far-flung, but they’re typically strongest across the tropics – from the Indian and Pacific Oceans to the Atlantic and into Africa – and over the midlatitudes of North and South America, the land masses closest to the Niño3.4 region.

Read: Five things you need to know about El Niño’s likely comeback

In a nutshell, El Niño tends to bring dry (and often hot) conditions in and around Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and the Amazon and Central America, while relatively cool and wet conditions often prevail over East Africa and the southern tier of the United States. The timing of these common repercussions (called teleconnections) varies a bit. For example, North American impacts are triggered largely by interactions with the midlatitude jet stream, so they’re normally strongest toward winter, when the jet stream is more active. On a global scale, the heat transferred from ocean to atmosphere during El Niño tends to cause record-warm years in our human-warmed climate.

Figure 2. Typical El Niño influences, or teleconnections, on precipitation. (Image credit: NOAA)

In some parts of the world, the El Niño playbook is higher-confidence than elsewhere. One of those is the northern tier of the United States and much of adjacent Canada, where El Niño reliably delivers warmer-than-average winter weather. Emily Becker and Michael Tippett analyzed this connection as part of their deep dive into North American temperature responses to ENSO in a 2024 paper published in the Journal of Climate. This region sits hundreds of miles poleward from the broader-scale warming and drying that afflicts much of the tropics, but it’s part of the same web of El Niño teleconnections.

El Niño’s blunting of the usual big swings in winter temperatures across this region is noteworthy. “Not only does this warm zone experience many mild days during El Niño, but it also gets fewer cold snaps,” said Tippett (Columbia University). And while La Niña winters in the northern U.S. and Canada can be either warmer or colder than average, El Niño is more consistently on the warm side, Becker and Tippett found.

Sometimes, even a fairly dependable seasonal-scale tendency driven by El Niño can hide important smaller-scale details. The Indian monsoon tends to be drier than average during El Niño, but a 2025 analysis in Science found that amid these drier-than-usual monsoons, the occasional rainfalls that do occur seem to be turbocharged, dropping more extreme short-term rains than usual.

Likewise, hurricane activity tends to decrease in the Atlantic and ramp up in the Pacific during El Niño events. This may well pan out in 2026, based on sea surface temperatures and other ocean and atmosphere signals already showing up in seasonal models. But even in an otherwise quiet year, there could be periods of atmospheric alignment when dangerous Atlantic hurricanes still emerge.

One bright spot with El Niño is that it tends to suppress U.S. tornado activity during the winter and subsequent spring (see Figure 3 below). La Niña events sometimes but not always lead to major spring tornado outbreaks, whereas the suppressive effect of El Niño appears to be a bit more reliable. The big exception is in and around Florida: Some of the state’s worst tornado outbreaks on record outside of tropical cyclones occurred near the tail end of the powerful El Niño events of 1982-83 (on March 16-17), 1997-98 (on February 22-23), and 2015-16 (on February 23-24).

Figure 3. Seasonal tornado activity (height on the vertical axis) for each February-April from 1979 through 2023 versus the state of ENSO (La Niña on the left, El Niño on the right) based on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index. (Image credit: NOAA Climate.gov graphic, adapted from original by Kelsey Malloy, now at the University of Delaware.)

And what about climate change?

Very strong El Niño events are rare enough birds on their own, so it’s tough to assess how these events, and their impacts, will evolve as human-caused warming continues to grow.

Not that long ago, the 2023-24 El Niño event was expected to cause major global repercussions. And indeed, on the “traditional” Oceanic Niño Index, or ONI, it ended up in the “very strong” range, peaking at 2.1. However, the impacts didn’t play out as expected, especially in midlatitudes, where the connections to El Niño were unusually weak. As it happens, record heat was swaddling much of the world at the time, including tropical oceans, and that appears to have blunted the effects of El Niño.

In a 2025 Journal of Climate paper, a team led by Clara Deser, a senior scientist at the National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research, carried out a set of model experiments showing that long-term warming in the Indian and Atlantic tropical oceans, together with long-term cooling in the eastern tropical Pacific, can lead to a counteracting large-scale circulation that almost completely negates the effects of an El Niño event.

As Deser and colleagues wrote, “historical precedent may no longer be a reliable guide to ENSO teleconnections as anthropogenic warming patterns intensify.”

In a recent New York Times roundup of potential El Niño impacts, Deser said: “We are now in a different baseline climate.”

In a similar vein, Australia’s Felicity Gamble said: “The increasing warmth in our oceans, both globally and in the Australian region, mean that history is now a poorer guide for seasonal prediction.”

The 2023-24 event helped turn attention toward using the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, with the idea that RONI might work better than ONI in factoring out periods of intense tropics-wide heat (such as 2023-24) from the assessment of El Niño. Sure enough, the 2023-24 event reached the strong range in RONI, topping out at 1.5 (borderline strong) rather than landing in the more rarefied very-strong range on the traditional scale.

“The weakened impacts of the 2023-24 El Niño compared to expectations can be reconciled, at least in large part, by its substantially weaker amplitude based on RONI instead of the traditional ONI,” said NOAA’s Johnson.

If there’s a poster child for counterintuitive El Niño behavior, it’s the bizarre dryness that plagued Southern California during the winter of 2015-16, one of the strongest El Niño events on record. El Niño is often wet across much of California, but there’s ample variability, as documented by Jan Null. In a website post, Null described the 2015-16 case as the “poster child for ‘All El Niños are not the same!’ ”

Michelle L’Heureux, a physical scientist who leads the ENSO team at the NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center, encourages thinking of El Niño as shifting the odds of various seasonal outcomes (e.g., wetter, drier, hotter, cooler). If those odds are expressed as a bell curve, then the stronger the event, the further El Niño pushes that curve to one side.

L’Heureux points to the 2015-16 California case as a cautionary tale on how El Niño forecasts should be treated as guidance rather than a guarantee.

“This doesn’t mean a major El Niño didn’t happen or it did not have a considerable influence on the global circulation (it did). It means that, in southern California, even a very strong El Niño was not able to nudge the distribution over enough to the point where drier outcomes were impossible.”

Looking ahead, L’Heureux added: “In 2026-27, I am confident we will see at least some locations in the U.S. that will not align with the expected El Niño impact.” 

Jeff Masters contributed to this post.