Hey there,

Hope you had a nice weekend. Not to bring the vibes down but a lot of people across North America and Europe certainly didn’t have great weekends as fires in France, Spain, as well as in Canada and most recently the Pacific Northwest either sparked or intensified. Almost 300,000 people in France and Spain have now been displaced by fires this summer. In light of all that, we’ll spend some time today to cover climate statistics being broken this summer before shifting our attention to better news on the climate tech for mitigation and adaptation fronts.

• While Tesla’s stock price took a beating this week as its quarterly earnings report struck analysts as lackluster, it’s battery energy storage deliveries continue to climb ~40% year-over-year (the chart is my own). Also worth noting that while Tesla’s deployments rise, BYD surpassed it as company with the most BESS deployments in 2025. Link. Link.

• The Arctic saw record-low winter sea ice in both 2025 and 2026, restoring a long-term decline trend. Link.

• June's heatwave destroyed nine million tonnes of European crops, costing grain farmers alone >$2 billion. It also cost the UK economy £1.15 billion ($1.5 billion) in lost work hours, per a survey of 1,950 UK adults by the LSE's Grantham Research Institute and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. Link. Link.

• An Allianz study found that for every degree above 30° C, output per hour falls roughly $1.3 while energy consumption rises (on average across many developed economies). If we extrapolate that, five consecutive record-breaking heat years would cost Japan an additional $354 billion, France $240 billion, and Germany $131 billion. The European Commission is urging member states to spend $80 billion annually on heat-proofing infrastructure, ecosystems, and food security as a result. Link.

• The average hottest day of the year has risen 4.5° C this decade across an area of England from Kent to Lincolnshire versus 1961–90, per the Met Office's latest state of the UK climate report. Link.

• ~30,000 people were evacuated across France and Spain as a third consecutive heatwave pushed temperatures past 44° C in southern Europe as a marine heatwave running alongside it in the Mediterranean. About 70,000 hectares have burned in Spain year-to-date across 18 major wildfires, nearly triple the area burned in the same period of 2025. France, meanwhile, has lost over 41,000 hectares to wildfire year-to-date, quadruple its typical pace, and recorded 5,764 excess deaths during the June 17–July 2 heatwave, its worst heatwave mortality since 2003, when 15,000 died. Link. Link. Link.

• 900+ wildfires also burned in Canada; more than 100 of them are out of control, and the smoke from them prompted air quality alerts in 20 U.S. states two weeks ago. Link.

• Trump threatened billions in additional tariffs on Canadian imports over the smoke, saying Canada was not properly maintaining its forests. This piece is also excellent on the implications of this spat for future climate-driven geopolitical feuds. Link.

• Heatwaves have also produced a continent-wide drought, with the Rhine, Danube, and other major river systems dropping. Scientists point to heat rather than a lack of rainfall as the main driver; warm water evaporates faster and warm air holds more moisture. Low levels have disrupted cargo shipping, harvests, and hydropower, and some countries have banned non-essential water use. Link.

• Phoenix endured two of its hottest nights ever in a row over the weekend. The temperature only fell to 97° F on Thursday night before climbing back to 117° F during the day, then dropped to 97° F again Friday night…. before then hitting 117° F again. Link

• Her are two more articles worth reading if the above dynamics are of interest to you: The Economist on diminishing global reflectivity (first link) and The Climate Brink newsletter on this year’s El Niño potentially being the strongest ever recorded (second link). Link. Link.

• The IEA expects renewables to surpass coal as the world's largest source of electricity this year. The agency does still see power-sector carbon emissions rising 1% in 2026 before flattening in 2027, driven by demand from AI datacenters, air conditioning, plus gas-to-coal switching in response to the Iran war and repeated Hormuz disruptions. The trajectory remains far off what’s require to hit Paris temperature targets. Link. Link.

• Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions grew more than 2% last year on surging electricity demand and increased coal-fired generation, per the EIA. New factories and data centers plus record summer cooling demand drove a lot of that load growth. Link.

• PJM's capacity auction for 2028–29 cleared at its $325 per megawatt-day cap again, and the grid operator still failed to secure enough supply to meet incoming demand with an adequate reserve margin. Link.

• China's nationwide electricity load hit its first record high of the year on July 10, at 1.518 against 1.508 on July 17 a year earlier, per the National Energy Administration, driven by internet data services and EV charging demand. Link.

• Solar was the EU's top electricity source across both May and June, hitting a record 25% of regional power last month, per Ember. Spain and Germany each drew over a third of June electricity from solar; Hungary reached nearly 50%. Five years ago solar supplied ~10%, even in peak months. E.U. power-sector CO2 emissions also fell by nearly a fifth between 2020 and 2025. Link.

• LONGi's newest solar cell reached 35.5% power conversion efficiency, a milestone that was verified last week in European certification testing. The crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem design pairs a perovskite top cell with a silicon bottom cell. Link.

• Riyadh and the Trump administration have struck a deal that would likely let Saudi Arabia enrich and reprocess nuclear fuel on its own soil. That breaks from the 2009 US–UAE 123 Agreement, under which Abu Dhabi renounced enrichment and reprocessing and which Washington had planned to require regionwide. Link.

• Holtec International filed an S-1 to list on the Nasdaq, betting its 300-megawatt SMR-300 pressurized-water reactor will represent a big part of nuclear fission’s future. The 40-year-old Florida firm, historically a spent-fuel canister manufacturer and decommissioner, told the SEC it expects regulatory approval in 2029 and first deployment in the early 2030s. Link.

• Constellation Energy's venture arm made an undisclosed strategic investment in Blue Energy, its first venture bet on U.S. small modular reactors, as part of Blue Energy $380 million round it closed in April. Blue Energy prefabricates power plants in 1,000-to-2,000-ton blocks barged to site, a model borrowed from offshore oil, gas, and LNG. It will run reactors on GE Vernova gas turbines first and convert to GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 reactors later. Link.

• China General Nuclear installed the reactor pressure vessel for unit 1 at the Lufeng plant in Guangdong, which the company said begins the peak period for nuclear island main system equipment installation and lays groundwork for main pipeline work. Link.

• General Fusion became the first pure-play fusion company to trade publicly, listing on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III that brought in $150 million. The stock rose on its debut but has already fallen significantly since. CEO Greg Twinney declined to say when the company expects revenue; it is targeting operating a commercial plant by 2035. It remains a zero-revenue company and lags several fusion peers on capital raised. Fifty-six fusion companies raised a combined record $4.48 billion over the last 12 months, per the Fusion Industry Association, a sharp jump year-over-year. Link. Link.

• Eversource and National Grid will let Massachusetts customers enroll V2G-capable EVs in the ConnectedSolutions demand flexibility program, working with EnergyHub, Sunrun's grid services arm, and The Mobility House. The program spans five states, orchestrating over 280,000 DERs and more than 800MW of flexible capacity. Link.

• BP is closing its venture arm and selling stakes in more than 10 companies to Verdane, retaining interests in a small number of investments. Link.

• Chinese lithium battery shipments rose 38% in January–June year-over-year, with wind turbine exports up 36%, per the General Administration of Customs. Link.

• Terraform Industries produced a greater than 99% purity CO2 stream from its demo calciner at its Muroc desert test site in 110F heat, powered entirely by its own captive solar array, on the first attempt. The company closed on the land in January and finished installing nearly 3,000 panels by end of March. The array delivered about 30 kW to the test fixture, temperatures rose past 1000C, and the team calcined over 85% of the starting carbonate. The system captures CO2 from ambient air at 400 ppm and concentrates it to over 99% purity in one step, feeding a hydrocarbon synthesis reactor producing methane or methanol; internal production cost is already below $200 per tonne. Link.

• China will apply a 2% consumption tax to lithium-ion batteries used in EVs and storage from this September, and to solar batteries from April 1, 2027, ending prior exemptions. Beijing framed the move as reining in intense competition in industries central to the clean energy transition. Link.

• New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order creating the nation's first statewide data center moratorium, pausing environmental permits for projects at 50MW or above for up to a year while a regulatory framework is built. That framework includes a Generic Environmental Impact Statement covering the power these facilities draw, their water use and its quality impacts, and air quality, plus guidance within 60 days for local entities negotiating community benefits. Link

• A day later, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer took the opposite tack, unveiling a package of 10 commitments designed to make AI data center developers bear the full bill for building, running, powering, and watering their facilities. Link.

• The European Commission proposed admitting carbon removal into the EU Emissions Trading System for the first time, initially limited to direct air capture and BECCS. Current rules bar companies from using carbon credits of any kind for compliance, but the bloc plans to lean on removal to offset residual emissions from the hardest-to-abate industries as 2040 approaches. Link.

• Separately, the EU is set to slow ETS emission limit cuts over the next decade in an overhaul giving heavy industry more time to scale clean technologies while keeping 2050 climate neutrality intact. The review would allow new allowances well into the 2040s; current rules permit no new allowances until 2039. Link.

• Every U.S. legislative effort on solar radiation management to date has taken the form of a ban, with Republican legislators across dozens of statehouses and in Congress introducing bills prohibiting both cloud seeding and anything resembling solar geoengineering. Most stalled, but three passed, in Florida, Tennessee, and Louisiana. A new paper from the University of Houston's Tracy Hester and the University of Edinburgh's Craig Segall proposes a narrow permit-based statute instead, regulating only atmospheric release above a threshold defined by substantial environmental impacts, with civil and potentially criminal penalties for unpermitted activity and a public docket of applications and decisions. UCLA's Ted Parson and Columbia's Michael Gerrard both endorsed the framework. Link.

• U.S. EV sales fell 21% in the second quarter of 2026 as the expiration of federal tax credits impacted sales. There may be some renewed strength going forward given prolonged spells of high oil prices. Link.

• Lucid shares fell as much as 55% eleven or so days ago, the largest intraday drop in company history, after a report that AlixPartners had been asked to present restructuring findings to the board before its next meeting. Options under evaluation include taking the Saudi-backed automaker private or filing Chapter 11, with the adviser recommending another restructuring round across the US and Europe. Lucid separately denied it is considering bankruptcy, confirming only that it hired AlixPartners to strengthen the business. Lucid says its cash runway extends into the back half of next year, sustained by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, its largest shareholder. Link.

• Tesla stock closed down 14.5% at $319.69 Thursday, its lowest since August 5, 2025, on mixed Q2 results. Revenue came in at $28.24 billion against $26.32 billion expected, up 26% year-on-year, but adjusted EPS of $0.33 missed the $0.50 estimate and adjusted EBITDA of $3.2 billion fell short of $4 billion. Cash burn and production of Cybercab and Optimus remain investor concerns. Link.

• Hyundai's IONIQ 3 debuted on the road in the UK at Goodwood, with pricing expected to start under £25,000 (about $33,500) ahead of orders opening. Hyundai said the model has drawn the highest customer interest it has recorded for any new vehicle, gas or electric. Link.

• Einride agreed to acquire Flipturn in a $38 million all-stock deal. The ten-year-old Stockholm operator of electric and autonomous freight trucks and logistics software is buying a four-year-old New York company building software to run EV-charging operations. Link.

• Climate tech VC investment reached $26.1 billion in H1 2026, up 55% year-on-year and the strongest first half since 2022, even as deal count hit a five-year low with a 25% decline. The ten largest deals took 42% of all funding. Series C set an all-time half-year record at $10.5 billion, close to quadrupling and reaching 40% of stage share versus 16% a year ago, with DayOne ($4.5bn) and Nscale ($2bn) accounting for almost two-thirds of it. Link.

• Brookfield Asset Management agreed to buy Aypa Power in a $7 billion deal. The announcement describes Aypa as the largest standalone battery storage developer in North America, with a development pipeline exceeding 20 gigawatts. Link.

• Valar Atomics, a three-year-old El Segundo, CA-based startup developing small modular nuclear reactors, is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion led by Sequoia at roughly a $6 billion valuation. Link.

• Sila, based out of Alameda, CA, raised $300 million co-led by Atreides Management and Sutter Hill Ventures to make silicon-carbon anode materials that replace graphite in lithium-ion batteries to raise energy capacity for EVs and other devices. 8VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, and T. Rowe Price Associates also participated. Link.

• Asuene, based out of Tokyo, raised $87 million in Series D funding led by Decarbonization Partners to help companies measure, reduce, and report emissions, manage supply chain sustainability, obtain third-party assurance, buy carbon credits, and cut energy use. Link.

• Greenjets, a London-based developer of high-performance electric and hybrid-electric propulsion systems for drones and other unmanned aircraft, raised a £30 million (~$40 million) Series A led by Blossom Capital, with participation from the NATO Innovation Fund, National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Tanglin Ventures, and the NSFO Family Office. Link.

• Arrakis, based out of London and Paris, raised a $30 million Series A at a $140 million post-money valuation led by Blossom Capital to help industrial companies automate operational workflows across aerospace, energy, logistics, and manufacturing. Accel, GFC, MainObject, and Rerail also invested. Link.

• Syntetica, based out of Paris, raised a $30 million Series A led by Bpifrance's Ecotechnologies 2 fund to recycle mixed nylon textile waste. SWEN Capital Partners, Lululemon, MAS Holdings, EQT Ventures, and family offices tied to Peugeot, Etam, and Indorama Ventures also invested. Link.

• Eurodia Industrie, based out of Pertuis, France, raised $20.5 million from investors including Starquest Capital and Yotta Capital Partners to build industrial liquid-treatment systems that help manufacturers recover valuable materials and cut waste from complex liquid streams. Link.

• Circular Materials, based out of Padua, Italy, raised €11.8 million (~$13.5 million) in SAFE funding from investors including CDP Venture Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund, and 360 Capital to develop technology to recover critical raw materials from industrial wastewater. Link.

• Deutsche Sanierungsberatung, based out of Berlin, raised a €10 million (~$11.4 million) Series A led by Simon Capital and Verbund X Ventures to facilitate climate-neutral home renovations. IBB Ventures, Vireo Ventures, and Atlantic Food Labs also participated. Link.

• Subra, a Farum, Denmark-based developer of superconducting materials for energy-efficient power grids and advanced technological applications, raised a €10 million (~$11.4 million) Series A from Bayern Kapital. Link.

• Bluecore Energy, based out of Long Beach, CA, raised a $10 million pre-seed round led by Slauson & Co. to build barge-mounted small nuclear reactors to power ports, coastal infrastructure, and data centers. Harlem Capital, Precursor Ventures, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, and HartBeat Ventures also invested. Link.

• ORiS, based out of Turin, Italy, raised €5 million (~$5.7 million) in pre-seed funding led by Earlybird and Pitchdrive to develop laser-based wireless power transmission systems for space satellites. Galaxia, Vento, and Piemonte Next Fund also participated. Link.

• Piq Energy, based out of San Francisco raised a $5 million seed round led by Active Impact Investments to help automate grid engineering studies for utilities and developers to speed new power project interconnection. Cisco Foundation, Mobilize AI x Energy Ventures, New Climate Ventures, Ascent Energy Ventures, Umami Capital, CLAI Ventures, and 9Zero also participated. Link.

• NextGo EPI, based out of Berlin startup raised a $2.3 million pre-seed round led by Vireo Ventures, with Ultratech Capital Partners and IBB Ventures participating, for its gallium oxide wafers that form the active layer in high-power chips for EV chargers and other types of energy equipment. Link.

• B Capital, a nine-year-old venture firm based in San Francisco and Singapore, closed on a $500 million early-stage fund to back seed through Series B AI companies in technology, energy, and healthcare across North America and Asia. Link.

Hasta la vista,

— Nick