Hi there,

Hope you had a great weekend and a nice ~ten days. Nothing too exciting on my end, other than to say I’m headed back to the East Coast after a summer spent predominantly in California. Hope to see many of you in New York for climate week, which is somehow already less than a month away. If you’ve got cool events planned or ones you’re particularly exicted for, lmk!

• New EIA data shows that utility-scale battery storage capacity has grown 70% annually over the past three years in the U.S. and that developers added 8.3 gigawatts in the first half of this year, with another 14 gigawatts expected by early 2027. Link.

• A rapidly intensifying "super El Niño" is now more than 2.6°C above normal in the Pacific benchmark region, already the third-strongest on record with four months still to go. NOAA now puts the odds of it becoming the strongest ever measured at roughly 70%, with other analysts estimating the pattern could cost the global economy more than $3 trillion and put 2027 on track for a 95% chance of becoming the warmest year on record. Link. Link.

• Global ocean temperatures hit their highest July levels ever recorded, with Copernicus data showing average sea surface temperatures outside the poles reaching 20.96°C, edging out the previous 2023 record. Link.

• The U.S. mainland just recorded its hottest month ever measured, with a July average of 76.9°F, which narrowly edged the previous record, which was set during the 1936 Dust Bowl. The full data series stretches back 132 years. Link.

• Western Europe endured its hottest June-to-July stretch on record, with Copernicus measuring a combined average of 21.62°C and soil moisture running well below the levels seen during 2022's severe drought. Link.

• Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest US reservoirs, have fallen to record-low levels after a record-low winter snowpack was wiped out by a hot spring, pushing the Colorado River closer to thresholds that would start affecting hydropower output. Link.

• Methane emissions from Siberia rose 5% annually between 2010 and 2023, driven by a combination of wildfires and thawing permafrost. Link.

• The Trump administration pulled NOAA funding for the Arctic Report Card, the two-decade-old annual assessment of Arctic warming, though the agency says the underlying data will still be collected and published. Link.

• The Trump administration is also spending $7 billion on 11 Finnish-built polar icebreakers, more than double what the Coast Guard requested, waiving a law that normally requires such ships be built domestically. The signal here is (possibly) that the administration is preparing for a world in which many more Arctic shipping routes open. Link.

• Heron Power, led by a former Tesla executive, unveiled a $100 million transformer factory in Morgan Hill, California, aimed at modernizing grid hardware to handle new solar, storage, and rising electricity demand. Link.

• Canadian PM Mark Carney unveiled a ~$50.2 billion plan to expand the country's hydropower fleet and build new wind capacity , including upgrades to the Churchill Falls station and a new Gull Island project, alongside continued refurbishment of Canada's CANDU reactor fleet. Link.

• Sage Geosystems has begun generating power from its 3-megawatt next-generation geothermal pilot near San Antonio, becoming just the third enhanced geothermal system to connect to the U.S. grid (after Fervo Energy and Ormat). The company also reports that it now loses less than 10% of cycled water, a key efficiency benchmark, and says the results will inform an upcoming Nevada collaboration with Ormat that's a precursor to its planned 150-megawatt geothermal deal with Meta. Link.

• Roughly 750 gigawatts of battery energy storage projects are stuck in grid interconnection queues nationwide, with median wait times stretching to five years in 2025, up from 18 months a decade ago. Link.

• U.S. clean energy and transportation investment hit roughly $75 billion in Q2, the second-largest quarter on record, driven largely by a rebound in EV purchases and an all-time high in residential battery sales, even as clean manufacturing investment remains about 24% below year-ago levels. Link.

• European energy startups raised almost €3.2 billion (~$3.74 billion) in the first half of 2026, nearly matching the prior two years combined, with June alone producing 23 deals, making it the busiest month in over two years. Link.

• The FCC approved a test launch for Reflect Orbital's Eärendil-1 satellite, which uses an 18-square-meter mirror to beam concentrated sunlight to Earth; the company eventually wants a 50,000-satellite fleet. Astronomers are concerned about eye-safety risks. Link.

• Home decarbonization startup BlocPower told investors it will shut down and liquidate, a month after saying it would instead try to sell off its IP and software. Link.

• The EIA projects the U.S. will set another natural gas production record in 2026, averaging 122.5 billion cubic feet of marketed output per day and cementing its status as the world’s largest natural gas producer (a title the U.S. has claimed since 2009). H1 2026 production outstripped H1 2025 production by roughly 4%. Recent production gains stem largely from heavier drilling in the Permian and Haynesville. Link.

• The DOE handed out $500 million across seven awardees to build domestic battery-material supply chains: $100 million each to Lilac Solutions (lithium extraction at the Great Salt Lake), Jervois (cobalt refining), and Nth Cycle (battery recycling), plus $50 million apiece to Princeton NuEnergy, Arcanum Ventures, Elevated Materials, and Coreshell Technology. Link.

• The Pentagon also announced more than $2 billion for battery and mineral producers, including $1.4 billion for Sila Nanotechnologies and $400 million for scandium producer Sunrise Energy Metals, even as the administration's earlier repeal of EV tax credit content requirements undercut domestic mineral demand elsewhere. Link.

• LG Energy Solution opened a $2.6 billion grid-battery plant in Michigan, repurposing a site once planned as an EV battery joint venture with GM before demand cooled. Link.

• Battery cell production is resuming at an Ohio plant co-owned by GM and LG Energy Solution after a seven-month pause tied to softer EV demand. Link.

• Solid-state battery startup Anthro Energy broke ground on a Louisville, Kentucky factory meant to supply electrolyte materials for more than 300,000 EVs, backed by $24.9 million in DOE funding and $18.4 million in investment tax credits. Link.

• X-energy says the DOE plans to award it another $1 billion for its small-reactor project with Dow in Texas, bringing total federal support for the site to $2.15 billion. Link.

• China loaded first fuel into Tianwan Unit 7, marking the country's first commercial deployment of a Russian-designed VVER-1200 reactor, with operation expected later this year. Link.

• A jellyfish bloom tied to unusually hot coastal waters forced EDF to shut three units and curtail a fourth at its Gravelines nuclear station in France, forcing more than 3.2 gigawatts offline. Link.

• Egypt's first nuclear plant hit a milestone as the containment vessel for its Russian-built El Dabaa unit nears completion. Link.

• OpenAI is leasing a 10-gigawatt data center campus under development in Pike County, Ohio, financed through a SoftBank subsidiary and backed by Nvidia. To power it, the Energy Department plans to build and own a 9.2-gigawatt natural gas plant on federal land. This facility that would edge out the Grand Coulee Dam as the largest power plant in the country. Notably, the Trump administration has also fast-tracked the project's federal environmental review, with a target completion date of December 23. Last week, discussion about a data center Amazon is developing with ~7.6+ gigawatts of natural gas-fired power generation capacity also raised concerns about the emissions footprint the AI buildout will drive. Link. Link.

• Elsewhere, Georgia Power delayed a proposed 25-year contract to supply OpenAI's $20 billion coastal data center after regulators signaled they'd reject the original terms; West Virginia, meanwhile, rolled out a competing set of data-center-friendly rules, including a proposal to cut state income taxes using new AI-driven revenue. Link.

• A new Heatmap Pro poll found that three-quarters of Americans now oppose data centers being built near them, a figure that’s up 33 points (from 42%) in a year. Opposition has risen across every age group, party, and region as well. Link.

• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order requiring data center developers to meet affordability, community engagement, and environmental standards before the state grants permits. Link.

• Crusoe, the Denver-based data center operator that runs facilities on stranded and clean power (in part, it often also develops natural gas plants), is reportedly exploring an IPO with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan. Link.

• New startup Meteoric launched out of YC's Summer 2026 batch with drone technology that clears clouds over solar farms to boost output by 10-30% without chemicals; the company says its longer-term goal is weakening severe storms and hurricanes. Link.

• Google launched Operation Blue Skies with the UK government and airlines, using AI to reroute flights around a North Atlantic corridor to avoid forming contrails, which the program's leads say account for roughly a third of aviation's climate impact. Link.

• Kazakhstan's cloud-seeding program to fight drought, which has covered ~900,000 hectares with UAE assistance, has drawn accusations from Kyrgyzstan that its neighbor is effectively stealing regional rainfall. Cited experts say the effects are likely too localized (or irrelevent and diminutive) to matter much beyond Kazakhstan's borders. That said, this dynamic is illustrative of geoplitical concerns that will almost certainly dog weather modification and climate intervention efforts in the future, regardless of what attribution studies and analyses say. These are especially relevant considerations in light of our recent exploration of new companies advancing cloud seeding technologies. Link.

• Tesla won approval to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in Nevada. Link.

• California's Public Utilities Commission cleared Waymo to grow its robotaxi footprint, adding 18 counties that stretch from the Sonoma coast down to greater San Diego. Link.

• Tesla buyers have already exhausted the automaker's allotment of California's new $135 million EV rebate program, just a week after it launched. Link.

• Archer Aviation is acquiring Boeing's Wisk Aero, Insitu, and SkyGrid units in an all-stock deal, shifting the air-taxi developer toward broader aerospace and defense revenue. Link.

• Form Energy, based out of West Virginia, raised a $750 million Series G for its 100-hour iron-air batteries. Link.

• Hydrostor, the Canadian compressed-air storage developer, raised $230 million from the Canadian government's investment fund, Goldman Sachs, Canadian pension funds, and oilfield services giant Baker Hughes. Link.

• Muon Space, based out of Mountain View, CA, raised a $250 million Series C led by Eclipse Capital for its LEO satellite constellations with climate and other Earth system monitoring applications. Google, Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, and others also participated. Link.

• Also, the Rivian spinout based out of Palo Alto, CA, closed a $150 million Series D led by Prysm Capital to make pedal-assist e-bikes, cargo quads, and self-driving delivery vehicles. Link.

• The All Aboard coalition, a group of prominent climate tech investors, unveiled a $133 million inaugural venture fund (less than half its initial $300 million target but still a nicely sized investment vehicle). Link.

• Apollo Atomics, based out of Cambridge, MA, raised a $26 million seed round (with $5 million of that in debt) for its small modular reactor development business. FCVC led and Y Combinator, Stanford, and roughly a dozen other backers also invested. Link.

• Ampaire, based out of Long Beach, CA, raised $19 million in Series B funding to convert commercial aircraft to hybrid-electric propulsion. DiamondStream Partners led. IAG and Alaska also invested. Link.

• Critical Minerals, based out of Princeton, NJ, raised $16 million across equity and grants to scale up its lithium output. Link.

• Sonic Fire Tech, based out of Cleveland, closed a $15 million round led The O.H.I.O. Fund to build fire-suppression gear that douses flames with infrasound instead of water or chemicals. Khosla Ventures also invested. Link.

• RockRose Risk, based out of Napa, CA, raised $12.5 million in Series A funding co-led by Crosslink Capital and Congruent Ventures to provide property owners with discounted premiums if they take on wildfire mitigation work. Link.

• AGent Energy, based out of Houston, closed an $11 million seed round to turn idle backup generators into an on-call grid resource. Spero Ventures and MassMutual Ventures led. Link.

• Riven Systems, based out of New York, closed a $7.9 million pre-seed to apply AI and automated lab work to mineral processing. Link.

• Computomics, based out of Tübingen, Germany, raised a $6.3 million Series B led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund to model how different crop varieties will fare under heat and drought stress. Link.

• Mafix, based out of Seattle, closed a $5.4 million pre-seed led by Azolla Ventures to convert silicate rock into carbon-capturing fertilizer. Link.

• SnerpaPower, based out of Reykjavík, Iceland, raised €3 million (~$3.5 million) in seed funding for its energy management software company that’s designed for power-intensive industries. Encevo led. SnerpaPower also received a separate €400,000 (~$470,000) grant from the Icelandic Technology Development Fund. Link.

Choo choo! The Empire State Passengers Foundation is thrilled to welcome New Yorkers (and whomever else) to Rochester on October 7th for a symposium and discussion on passenger rail and its many benefits. The event agenda will include policymakers, elected officials, and business leaders from across New York, along with passenger rail leaders and experts from other states and Canada. New York has plans to greatly expand service and increase frequency of rail, but needs our support to keep projects moving. Help us ride forward toward more jobs and stronger economies, more travel options, sustainability and equity! Registration is now open → sign up here.

Until next time,

— Nick