NextEra’s proposed acquisition of Dominion Energy comes as Americans are paying a lot more for electricity, and data centers are demanding a lot more power from utilities.

Exclusive: Science agency is planning to sack a third of the team working on the national climate model, sources say

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Job cuts at the national science agency mean Australia will no longer be able to submit climate projections to form part of global reports and will have significantly reduced ability to forecast future damage to the country, leading researchers have warned.

Multiple sources told Guardian Australia that CSIRO planned to sack a third of the team working on the national climate model that provides projections relied on by governments, councils, industry and farmers as they plan for the future.

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The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) is launching a new funding opportunity through the Community Microgrid Assistance Partnership (C‑MAP), with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE). This latest solicitation offers up to $2.5 million in direct project funding supported by $1 million in technical ... [continued]

The post New US DOE Funding Opportunity To Strengthen Microgrids in Remote & Industrial Regions appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Soil DNA from Chile to the Antarctic Peninsula ties warmer climates to more plant fungal pathogens, with abundance projected to double by 2100.

The first dedicated gas station in the US was opened in 1905 in St. Louis, Missouri. Before it came to be, there weren’t any gas stations, and at one point there weren’t even any internal combustion engine vehicles. Before trains, for land travel, there were domesticated animals and people rode ... [continued]

The post The Last Gas Station appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Welcome to Locally Sourced, a biweekly Covering Climate Now newsletter for journalists working to localize the climate story. Share this newsletter with colleagues and journalism students interested in localizing the climate story. 

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Story Spark: Heat & Death

Extreme heat kills more than half a million people every year, roughly one person a minute. It is by far the deadliest extreme weather event, killing more in the US than hurricanes, storms, and all other extreme weather events combined — and its threat is increasing as global temperatures continue to rise. 

While we all face worsening heat, extreme heat is not felt equally. It disproportionately affects vulnerable communities, often those who have emitted very little of the heat-trapping gases causing this deadly threat. A new report projects that by 2050, 90% of deaths caused by rising temperatures will occur in low-and middle-income countries. Even in wealthier nations, the burden of heat is highly unequal among those with disabilities, unhoused people, and outdoor workers. Simply put, while heat is dangerous, isolation and inequality make it deadly — endangering those who are left alone or overlooked by their local and state governments.

Research suggests that most heat-related deaths are preventable through the combination of adequate cooling opportunities, comprehensive heat action plans, and improved temperature forecasts and alert systems. When exploring solutions to the increasing frequency and severity of extreme heatwaves, understand that even low to moderate heat can be deadly to especially vulnerable populations. Extended periods of abnormally warm day and nighttime temperatures create cumulative stress and can exacerbate existing health conditions and increase mortality. As a result, heat deaths often go underreported, resulting in an incomplete picture of this deadly threat.

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Expert Tips 

This edition’s tips come to you from Marisol Cortez and Greg Harman over at Deceleration, a nonprofit journal focused on environmental justice and growing solutions to an overheating world. Both have reported extensively on the human toll of extreme heat in Texas, and offer advice to ensure your heat reporting is in-depth and accurate.

Get to know who is at risk. Among those most vulnerable to heat are unhoused people, substance users, and people with serious mental illness, especially schizophrenia. Other groups disproportionately impacted by heat include outdoor workers, incarcerated people, and inadequately housed people — including residents of historically disinvested neighborhoods with older housing stock who either lack or can’t afford to run AC.

Develop relationships within a community before disaster strikes. Our strongest stories evolved from active relationships: Albert Garcia was an unhoused neighbor whom we worked with to find housing for over a year; he wound up back on the street during our area’s hottest summer ever — and died within three weeks. We knew that details of his death were not captured in the autopsy. Jessica Witzel was a family friend whose relatives were very open with us. During the researching and writing process, we heard anecdotal reports of other deaths that neighbors and family members had reason to believe were connected to heat. Most heat-related deaths likely will not be recorded as such, so your reporting needs to have documented authority to counter official positions. 

Explore the undercount. The undercounting of heat-related deaths is a widely recognized problem in assessing the impacts of climate change. How are your local officials counting — or not counting? Learn the National Association of Medical Examiners’ best practices on documenting and certifying disaster-related deaths and review the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s death scene investigation supplement for heat and see if local officials follow these practices.

Map the heat. Buy and learn how to use air temperature gauges. Often heat advisories are based on temperature measurements at official sites outside the urban core of a city. But impervious cover (like asphalt) and lack of greenspace and shade through our downtowns and highly developed thoroughfares — conditions deeply shaped by histories of environmental racism and classism — mean temperatures experienced by those most at risk could be up to 15 degrees hotter than what is reported by local meteorologists. In other words, an official heat warning or advisory may not be in effect, but dangerous conditions are still present in the most vulnerable areas. 

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Stories We Like

• Channel 4 News met with families across Europe for whom heat proved to be deadly and examined the climate connection to increasing heat across the continent. 
• In Phoenix, described as “America’s hottest city,” heat deaths are vastly underreported. The Guardian examined hundreds of autopsy reports to find what’s missing from these official documents
• In Pakistan, expectant mothers in the country’s poorest neighborhoods are miscarrying as intense heat, made more likely by climate change, is trapped in overcrowded, poorly ventilated homes, Fair Planet reports.  
• Despite blazing temperatures, Texas has zero labor protections for heat — leaving workers, especially immigrants, exceptionally vulnerable, Inside Climate News reports.
• After the death of an incarcerated woman during California’s hottest month on record, CalMatters explores how the state is finally embarking on a plan to cool some cells — only helping a small fraction of inmates. 

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Resources

• Find your state’s cooling centers on the National Center for Healthy Housing website. 
• Explore The Marshall Project’s in-depth guide on how to investigate dangerous heat in prisons. 
• Use the CDC’s online dashboard to track daily heat-related illnesses and emergency room visits across the US. 
• Check out the Lancet Countdown’s guide to heat and health, including a rundown of key heat terms, and explore their latest 2025 report on health and climate change.

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Experts

• Lisa Patel, executive director, The Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health 
• Connect with heat experts from around the world through the Global Heat Health Information Network’s directory 

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Before We Go…

The next Locally Sourced will highlight food waste. Food waste accounts for nearly 10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. Have you reported on the impact of this and possible solutions? Send them to us at local[at]coveringclimatenow[dot]org. We’d love to consider them for the next edition of Locally Sourced and our media trainings and social platforms.

CCNow Office Hours. Are you a journalist who needs help finding the local angle to a climate story? Sign up for office hours with CCNow’s David Dickson for editorial and climate support.

Want more story ideas? Check out the Locally Sourced archive for more topics to explore, including AI data centers, coastal flooding, air transportation, and more. 

Know someone who might be interested in this newsletter? Forward Locally Sourced to a colleague!

The post Covering Heat Deaths appeared first on Covering Climate Now.

The platform will invest across solar, wind, hybrid, and storage projects and is expected to generate more than 4 million megawatt-hours of clean energy annually

A House transportation bill introduced this week would require owners of electric cars to pay $130 to cover the cost of road repairs.

In conservative Utah, a coalition of cities and towns shows other communities how to bring new renewable energy to the electric grid in a unique way.

(Image credit: Kim Raff for NPR)

In our most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that annual electric power generation from utility-scale solar will surpass that from coal for the first time in 2026 within the electricity grid that covers most of Texas. Solar generation is expected to reach 78 billion kilowatthours (BkWh) in 2026 in the ... [continued]

The post Electricity Generation from Solar Could Exceed Coal in ERCOT for the First Time in 2026 appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier collapsed with shocking speed, retreating 15 miles in only 15 months and setting a modern record for grounded ice loss. Scientists say warming conditions and ocean-driven instability turned the glacier from seemingly stable to rapidly unraveling almost overnight.

The move has angered some supporters in the president’s Make American Healthy Again coalition

To Shoot for the Moon, Lab Researchers Must First Learn How To Fail on Earth By Rebecca Martineau Weeks ago, four NASA astronauts completed a pioneering journey around the moon. For 10 days, lithium-ion batteries on Artemis II played an important role in powering various communications, navigation, propulsion, and thermal ... [continued]

The post NLR Battery Innovation Awarded NASA’s Invention of the Year appeared first on CleanTechnica.

After the December end-of-incentive sales rush (NEVs are no longer exempt from purchase tax this year), and the following sales slump, high gas prices and a never ending wave of new models has allowed April to reach record EV market share, with plugins surpassing the 60% barrier for the first ... [continued]

The post The Big ICE Meltdown — April’s China EV Sales Report appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Australian government subsidises diesel from primary producers to the tune of AU$11 billion per year. Dr Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Metals has come out swinging, saying that the 18 largest miners receive about one third of this, and don’t need it.As Fortescue heads to real zero, Forrest wants a ... [continued]

The post Australia’s Big Miners Show the Way with Renewables appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Semiconductor-Catalyst Combo Captures Energy To Drive Chemical Reactions By Connor O’Neil Plants and algae make their fuel from sunlight. Perhaps we could do the same using semiconductors. A team of scientists at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) made strides in that direction. They discovered a silicon semiconductor coupled ... [continued]

The post Scientists Discover Way To Leverage High-Energy Sunlight for Fuel Production appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Memorandums of Understanding Combine Facilities and Capabilities To Build Pipelines for Tech Commercialization and Skilled Domestic Workforces By Brooke Van Zandt The National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) this week signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Utah that will help strengthen ... [continued]

The post NLR Partners With Colorado School of Mines and University of Utah To Scale Up US Critical Minerals Capacity appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Ford has said it would welcome a return to V-8 engines in Formula 1, taking the sport backwards to 2013 and high carbon emissions.

The post Ford Embraces The Combustion Engine For Formula One And The Future appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Toyota’s latest hydrogen truck move is not interesting because it is large. Forty trucks is not a large order in a global transport market. It is interesting because of what sits behind it. Hyroad, formed mostly by ex-Nikola executives, acquired hydrogen truck assets from Nikola’s remains, and Toyota then appeared ... [continued]

The post Toyota Keeps Trying To Assemble A Hydrogen Market That Refuses To Form appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Last year, BYD sued just over three dozen online influencers. In its opinion, thee 37 influencers had engaged in “repeated online attacks” and used “false or misleading information that it claims has harmed its brand image, disrupted market order, and negatively affected the wider automotive sector.” In other words, they ... [continued]

The post BYD Defamation Case Leads to Landmark Ruling appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The theme of the week month year has been Chinese electric vehicle producers working to export more of their vehicles ASAP around the world. We’ve also got news now of BYD planning a big wave of plugin vehicles for the European market. In other words, the story continues…. Chinese EV ... [continued]

The post BYD Targets Europe with Smaller, Tailored EV Models appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Electric vehicles (EVs), which have zero emissions, lead to lower air pollution. It is known. Then again, for EVs to meet their full green potential, a clean electric grid must power them. When electrical grids across regions are decarbonized, deeper and faster overall emission reductions are the result. What is ... [continued]

The post If Communities Adopt More EVs, Cleaner Grids Will Follow appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A new World Meteorological Organization report estimated 13,000 annual heat-related deaths across 17 countries in the region.

By Bob Berwyn

If the 2025 climate year in Latin America and the Caribbean showed anything, it was that floodwaters can’t erase long-term drought, that temperatures will continue to soar past livable limits and that once-unprecedented storms are part of the region’s new climate reality.

The rules were established by the Biden administration after research linked the compounds to a range of serious health problems.

Here’s the story of the expedition’s most ambitious project.

The used electric vehicle market is becoming one of the most interesting for me here in the United States. For years, there was pretty limited supply since not many EVs had been produced and there weren’t even that many models on the market. However, at the same time, depreciation was ... [continued]

The post Used Electric Vehicles — Is Now The Time To Buy, Or Better To Wait? appeared first on CleanTechnica.