Hey,

Hope you had a nice long weekend if you’re in the U.S. and got Labor Day off — I sure needed it after moving to Philly this week and spending Saturday running around New York. Will be back in NYC plenty for work this month, as well as, of course, for climate week. I’d say reach out and we can meet up, but honestly, I won’t have time for much more than what’s already planned, if that. Feel free to try!

• The U.S.’s meteoric rise as the largest producer of natural gas in the world continues, as H1 2026 offered another 4% rise over 2025, helping continue to keep domestic prices of gas (methane, not gasoline) low. Link.

• Scientists point to a large glacier collapse as the cause of the catastrophic Nepal-China border flash flood, which killed more than a thousand people in Nepal and 3 in China, with many still missing in Nepal and in Tibet. Satellite and seismic data suggest a section of glacier at roughly 5,200 meters broke away, triggering a jolt equivalent in magnitude to a 5.2 earthquake, before it blocked a river downstream (as reported by CNN and other accounts) sending a torrent "like an inland tsunami" nearly 170 kilometers downstream. Link. Link. Link. Link.

A UN official cautioned that the Himalayas face mounting danger from future glacial-lake floods, since entire riverbanks where millions live could become effectively uninhabitable; researchers had already flagged 47 potentially dangerous glacial lakes across Nepal, China, and India back in 2020, and the real number is thought to be considerably higher. The region's glaciers lost ice 65% faster between 2010 and 2020 than in the decade before that, and the UN expects glacial-lake flood risk here to roughly triple by the end of the century. The floods also wiped out a tenth of Nepal's electricity generation capacity and cast doubt on the country's hydropower expansion plans. Link. Link. Link.

Climate scientists, including Carbon Brief's Zeke Hausfather, cautioned that formal attribution of the disaster to climate change remains premature even as warming is understood to be increasing the risk of such events in the region. Separately, the Trump administration's earlier cut to a US aid program that monitored Nepal's glacier-collapse risk drew criticism amid the disaster response. Link. Link.

• The UN Environment Programme said in a new report that the world will soon exceed the 1.5°C warming threshold set under the Paris Agreement, making carbon dioxide removal necessary to bring temperatures back down; the report still projects decades of worsening weather disasters, sea-level rise, and ice loss in the interim. Link.

• Global greenhouse gas emissions were roughly flat (+0.2%) in the first half of 2026 per Climate Trace, as the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz disruptions hit oil and gas markets; declines in China and the US offset large increases in India and Brazil, while road transport emissions rose even as power, manufacturing, and shipping emissions fell. Link.

• The world's oceans hit their hottest recorded temperature on Saturday (21.1°C average sea surface temperature per Copernicus), driven in part by a supersized El Niño, layered, of course, on top of decades of human-caused warming. Link.

• A severe "flash drought" is pushing England's water network toward crisis, with roughly 30 million people facing hosepipe bans after heat waves and drought drained rivers, sparked wildfires, and caused record subsidence insurance claims in London; utilities are trucking in water and seeking emergency drought permits. Link.

• The Bureau of Reclamation announced sharp Colorado River water cuts for California, Nevada, and Arizona over the next two years, citing a 26-year "prolonged drought" that has depleted the country's two largest reservoirs. Link.

• Rainmaker says drone-based cloud seeding over Alaska's Kenai Peninsula produced an estimated 45 to 65 extra acre-feet of precipitation across seven missions. August was a banner month for weather modification companies generally, as per a NYT article (second Link), which also touched on Recast, which we wrote about here (as well as previously). Link. Link.

• PJM Interconnection's grid congestion costs jumped 43% to $6 billion in the first half of the year, which the grid's independent watchdog called the single biggest driver behind soaring wholesale electricity costs during high-stress events like heat waves. Link.

• Fervo Energy's stock rose nearly 30% after the enhanced-geothermal developer signed a deal to sell ~400 MW to Google from its Cape Station project in Utah, which will become the world's largest enhanced geothermal plant when it comes online in 2028. Link.

• Texas' grid hit several generation records over the past month, including all-time peak load (91,308 MW on July 22), peak renewables output (53,000 MW on August 13), peak wind (29,000 MW on June 29), and peak battery discharge (13,256 MW on August 23), all without ERCOT issuing a single voluntary conservation appeal this summer (vs. six over the same period in 2023). Link.

• Africa installed a record 17 GW of solar so far in 2026, up 45% year-over-year, per new Ember analysis; 36 of the continent's 54 countries are on track for record installations this year, led by the DRC (+544%), Zimbabwe (+282%), and Egypt (+176%). Link.

• Copper prices are presently surging to all-time highs (>$14,530 per ton). Link.

• Heidelberg Materials put its flagship Edmonton cement carbon-capture project on hold, citing Canadian carbon credit prices (~US$32/t) too low to justify the project's US$979 million cost. Link.

• Now, for some good news, Turkmenistan has begun plugging methane "mega-leaks" from its aging oil and gas facilities, repairing eight leaks so far after years of scrutiny following 2023 reporting that identified it as the world's worst offender; methane traps roughly 80x more heat than CO2 over short timeframes. Link.

• More on the natural gas-front; gas-fired power capacity in development for U.S. data centers has nearly doubled in under a year, from 97 GW at the end of 2025 to more than 189 GW as of mid-2026, per Global Energy Monitor. This accounts for a third of the global gas-project pipeline and represents over $647 billion in potential build cost. Many projects remain in early stages and may never be built. Link.

• The Michigan Infrastructure Office is putting $7.5 million into exploration and R&D for geologic hydrogen, citing the state's geology as unusually promising for the naturally occurring resource. Link.

• Holtec International began loading fuel into the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, a milestone that could allow the first-ever restart of a permanently shuttered US commercial reactor before its official March 2027 target. Link.

• Advanced nuclear startup Oklo filed an emergency complaint with FERC alleging PJM Interconnection improperly dropped its 750-megawatt nuclear/gas/fuel-cell hybrid project from the grid operator's interconnection study cycle. Link.

• The U.S. Army awarded up to $2.2 billion combined to five companies to build nuclear microreactors at five domestic bases under its Janus program: Antares Nuclear (Fort Bragg), BWXT Advanced Technologies (Fort Campbell), General Atomics (Fort Hood), Radiant Industries (Fort Benning, a $750 million, 15-microreactor award), and Westinghouse Government Services (Fort Drum) are the grantees. Link.

• DOE's National Reactor Innovation Center selected 13 projects from 12 developers, including Oklo, Antares Nuclear, Lightbridge, Valar Atomics, Sublime Nuclear, and Raven-Flint (an investment of mine) for its Nuclear Energy Launch Pad initiative, offering a prioritized pathway through DOE authorization for reactor and fuel-cycle technologies. Link.

• U.S. uranium concentrate production hit 2.1 million pounds in 2025, the most since 2017 and more than triple 2024 output, though still short of the roughly 47 million pounds US reactors consumed that year. Link.

• Vietnam approved its first commercial nuclear plant via a National Assembly vote, a two-reactor, 2.4 GW project, and Ho Chi Minh City is separately reviewing whether up to 6 GW of offshore wind is feasible there. Link.

• Three-year-old Pacific Fusion broke ground on a facility it hopes will be the first in the world to demonstrate net facility gain (energy out exceeding everything the whole system draws in, not just the reaction itself) by 2030, using a pulsed-power/Z-pinch approach scaled up from Sandia National Laboratories' design rather than the inertial-confinement laser approach used by Lawrence Livermore. Link.

• Seed-stage startup Marathon Fusion says its plasma centrifuge succeeded at enriching lithium-6 and hydrogen isotopes in lab tests, using non-radioactive stand-ins for tritium, addressing what it argues is a looming supply bottleneck, since a single 1-gigawatt fusion reactor could need roughly 1,000 times more lithium-6 than is produced globally today. Link.

• Fusion developer Shine is preparing to file for an IPO with Goldman and JPM as bookrunners, which could make it the first fusion company to reach public markets via a traditional listing rather than a SPAC. Link.

• A federal judge struck down New York's 2024 "Climate Change Superfund Act," which sought $75 billion from fossil fuel companies for climate damages, ruling the law improperly regulates interstate emissions under federal authority. The decision, which drew on precedent from a dismissed NYC lawsuit against Chevron, is seen as a setback for similar superfund laws in Vermont and roughly a dozen other states; a related Supreme Court case (Boulder County v. Exxon/Suncor) could settle the broader question. Link.

• France pledged over €1 billion (~$1.16 billion) to help farmers recover from a summer of record heat and drought that hit crops, pastureland, and water supplies hard, as the government simultaneously navigates a difficult budget ahead of the 2027 presidential election. Link.

• California's Newsom administration declined to authorize new funding for the state's Demand Side Grid Support program, one of the country's largest virtual power plants (~130,000 battery-equipped homes, ~75,000 with smart thermostats, over 1 GW of collective capacity), leaving its future for next year uncertain though the program wasn't dismantled outright. Link.

• California sued to stop the Trump administration's payout deal with Golden State Wind, under which the company would abandon its offshore wind leases off the state's coast; the state argues the arrangement puts thousands of jobs and its clean-energy investments at risk. Link.

• The Trump administration announced a deal for majority U.S. control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves, which Trump says will be used to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; lots of TBDs here, as legal experts question the deal's structure, and it has been criticized across Venezuelan politics. Link.

• After a year of renegotiation, the $500 million DOE grant originally given to Cleveland-Cliffs for a lower-carbon steel mill in Ohio will instead fund upgrades to a coal-fired blast furnace, a shift Congress's original funding language may make "possibly illegal." That leaves Hyundai's hydrogen-powered green steel plant in Louisiana, which is set to break ground imminently—and run initially on natural-gas-derived hydrogen, before (ideally) transitioning to electrolysis-based hydrogen by the early 2030s—as the nation's flagship green steel project. Link.

• Volkswagen plans to cut 100,000 jobs by 2030, 50,000 more than previously announced, and halve its model lineup as Chinese low-cost automakers erode its sales. Link.

• BYD, the world's largest EV maker, posted its first profit increase in over a year, driven mostly by international rather than domestic sales. Link.

• Finnish startup Donut Lab, which claims to have built the first production-ready solid-state EV battery, is facing "scam" accusations even as its CEO maintains the technology will revolutionize the industry. Link.

• Crusoe, based out of Denver, raised $3+ billion at a $30 billion post-money valuation, per Bloomberg, in a round co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners. The company helps run GPU-heavy data centers and cloud infrastructure for large enterprise AI customers. The company just signed a five-year, $13 billion computing deal with Jane Street. Link.

• Andreessen Horowitz launched a $1.1 billion "Machine Age" fund aimed at the physical infrastructure behind AI (chips, memory, data centers, cooling, electrical systems, and robotics.) Link.

• Aligned Climate Capital announced the first close of Aligned Solar Partners 7 (ASP7), a new infrastructure fund targeting $500 million to acquire and build out construction-ready distributed solar and storage projects. Link.

• Gatik, based out of Santa Clara, CA, company whose self-driving trucks handle middle-mile freight runs, raised $200 million, co-led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies. Millennium Management, ARK Invest, and Intact Private Capital also invested. Link.

• Emerald AI, based out of Washington, D.C., raised $150 million in Series A funding at a $1.05 billion valuation, in a round co-led by Energize Capital and DCVC to coordinate AI compute jobs with onsite power sources so data centers can throttle back energy consumption during periods of grid stress. Nvidia, Samsung Ventures, Siemens, Aramco Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, GE Vernova, RWE, and others invested. Link.

• Regent Craft, based out of North Kingstown, RI, raised $120 million in Series B equity, co-led by Mare Liberum and AE Ventures for its electric seagliders and vessels that skim above the water carrying passengers or military cargo along coastlines. DCVC, Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Japan Airlines, and Giant Step Capital also invested. The company also raised $120 million in debt from Erebor Bank. Link.

• Nexeon, based out of Abingdon, U.K., which develops advanced battery materials, raised €116.7 million (~$135.4 million), led by National Wealth Fund. Korea Development Bank and Honda Xcelerator Ventures also invested. Link.

• Cyclic Materials, based out of Toronto, raised $75 million led by T. Rowe Price to pull rare earth magnets and other critical minerals out of scrapped electronics and manufacturing waste to then convert them into rare earth oxides. ERI and returning investors Energy Impact Partners, Microsoft, Amazon, BMW i Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover, and Hitachi Ventures all invested. Link.

• Odyssey Energy Solutions, based out of Boulder, CO, raised $74 million ($27 million in equity and $47 million debt) to fund expansion into two- and three-wheeler EV battery financing and deepen its footprint in Nigeria, India, and Latin America. Broadscale Group, FMO, Al Mada Ventures, British International Investment, BIO, the Facility for Energy Inclusion, the Energy Entrepreneurs Growth Fund, Union Square Ventures, Equal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Twelve Below, FJ Labs, MCJ, and Transition Ventures all invested. Link.

• Quaise Energy, based out of Houston, added raised $35 million in Series B funding (to close with $180 million total) from Nabors Industries. This capital will help it finish its Project Obsidian plant in Oregon. Link.

• Voya Energy, based out of Hayward, CA raised $35 million led by Energy Impact Partners to turn recycled scrap aluminum into an on-demand backup power source data centers can use instead of diesel generators. John Doerr, Mantis VC, StepStone Group, Founders Fund, Overmatch Ventures, and Seven Stars also invested. Link.

• Gridsight, based out of Sydney, Australia, raised $26 million in a Series B led by Insight Partners to help utilities find spare grid capacity and connect new demand faster. Galvanize and Airtree, Energy Transition Ventures, and Aera VC also participated. Link.

• Mantel Capture, based out of Cambridge, MA, raised $18 million in a Series A co-led by Constellation Technology Ventures and Azimut Investments. The company builds carbon capture systems for power plants and heavy industry. Link.

• Certain Energy, based out of London, raised $13.6 million in a Series A led by British Business Bank to build manganese-based flow batteries for long-duration storage. Centrica, Ceres Power Holdings, and Temasek Trust also participated. Link.

• TerraBlaster, based out of Redwood City, CA, raised a $12.5 million seed round led by Ulu Ventures to use tractor-towed sensors to map soil pH and nutrients so growers can apply fertilizer more precisely. Khosla Ventures, Trailhead Capital, Builders Vision, Bidra, Ag Startup Engine, Reservoir, Sunna, Plug & Play, GrainInnovate, and the Hort Innovation Venture Fund also participated. Link.

• Newlight, based out of San Francisco, raised a $9 million seed round from lomarlabs, BIRD Energy, Undeterred Capital, CiRi Ventures, and Fusion VC to retrofit cargo ships with hydrogen-injection systems to cut diesel use and emissions. Link.

• Molten Salt Solutions, based out of Santa Fe, raised a $7 million seed round led by Dolby Family Ventures to make enriched lithium-6 and lithium-7 isotopes used to fuel fusion machines and molten-salt fission reactors. Vanedge Capital Partners, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, True Ventures, and Future Ventures also invested. Link.

• Teragen Energy, based out of Southborough, MA, raised a $6 million pre-seed round co-led by BEVC and Energy Capital Ventures to make modular fuel cells to power data centers and industrial sites onsite. AP Ventures, AIC Ventures, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and UntroD Capital Asia also invested. Link.

• Neocrete, based out of Auckland raised $3.5 million in equity funding led by returning investor Wavemaker Ventures to use concrete additives (fly ash and volcanic ash) to stand in for cement without sacrificing strength. Icehouse Ventures and Temasek Trust also participated. Link.

• Maglut Heavy Industries, based out of Long Beach, CA, raised a $3.1 million round from Wave Function, Nova Threshold, and Julian Capital to separate and refines rare earth elements from mined material for domestic electronics and clean energy supply chains. Link.

→ Pitch 1:1 to 20 relevant investors!

I’m happy to support the Virtual 1:1 VC Pitch Conf on September 17.

You can attend for free and watch keynotes & panels with speakers from a16z, 500 Global, Plug & Play, SOSV, Antler, Entrepreneurs First & other VCs.

You can also purchase a 1:1 Startup Pitch Ticket to pitch 20 VCs one-on-one.

380+ VCs, angels, and family offices who want to invest in AI, fintech, healthcare, and beyond will be available. You'll be matched based on your sector, stage, and geography.

And if you want to pitch 20 VCs, you can use code KEEPCOOL10 for 10% off!

Thanks y’all,

— Nick