Summer's off to a hot start

Hello hello,

Halfway through the year! Can’t believe it. Hope all of you in Europe are surviving the brutal heatwave, certainly helps cast all the updates and work we’re focused on in these pages in starker relief. I’ll be heading out to Europe on Thursday myself, with my first stop in Berlin. If that’s home for you or you’ll be around as well… let me know!

ONE STORY IN A SENTENCE AND A CHART

• Even in the U.S, more than half of people think climate change is a critical issue, though across the world, there’s also a stark perception gap in that most people underestimate the extent to which their peers agree with them. Link.

NEWS, DATA, AND HEADLINES

• Western Europe recorded its most severe and widespread heatwave on record this week. Scientists from the World Weather Attribution service found the event would have been 2°C cooler as recently as 2003, and 3.5°C cooler in 1976, and was "virtually impossible" just decades ago. France hit 43.8°C in Palluau; the UK broke its June temperature record at 36.1°C; Spanish officials attributed as many as 212 deaths to the heat. Nearly half of Europe's 850 largest cities also endured their worst-ever heat stress levels. Link.

• The Indicators of Global Climate Change 2025 report found Earth's energy imbalance, the gap between incoming solar energy and energy radiated back to space, is now at a record high, driven by reductions in cloud, snow, and ice cover and by cleaner particulate air. Link.

• The Antarctic Peninsula recorded its highest June temperature ever earlier this month at 15.4°C (59.7°F), a full 20°C above the usual early winter average. Link.

• New research from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Macquarie University identified roughly 166,000 square kilometers of coral reefs across 71 countries with genuine climate resilience, which offers a more hopeful picture than previously thought, concentrated in Australia, the Bahamas, Cuba, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Link.

• Real Ice's Arctic sea ice thickening project added 50cm of extra ice thickness this season, up from 30cm last year, and found that its artificially frozen ice is unexpectedly more reflective than surrounding natural ice, an unexpected bonus for the project's climate impact. Link.

Nuclear fission and fusion

• The U.S. Department of Energy announced a $17.5 billion low-cost loan (supply chain loans) program to finance construction of up to 10 Westinghouse AP1000 reactors across five U.S. sites. If these come to fruition, it could add 11 gigawatts of zero-carbon baseload power to U.S. grids by 2035. The department is already in talks with seven utilities; Westinghouse and the utilities would jointly own the completed plants. Link.

• Valar Atomics' Ward 250 reactor completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County on June 18. It’s the second advanced reactor to reach this milestone under the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program, and the first DOE-authorized reactor built outside a national laboratory. The facility was constructed from scratch in roughly nine months. Link.

• Aalo Atomics received DOE authorization to turn on its Critical Test Reactor at the Aalo-X campus. Energy Secretary Chris Wright came in person to sign the approval late last week. That’s the final regulatory step before Aalo can handle nuclear material and begin reactor start-up. Link.

• Commonwealth Fusion Systems received a "nine figures" investment from Abu Dhabi's Plynth Energy fund, adding Gulf sovereign capital to one of the most prominent fusion energy programs in the world. Link.

• China General Nuclear Power lifted the outer dome into place at its fifth reactor at the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant in Fujian province. The 270-metric-ton dome caps the containment vessel for the latest Hualong One, China's flagship domestically designed reactor. Link.

• Deep Fission, which aims to install next-generation nuclear reactors deep underground, raised $40 million in a lackluster IPO that came in significantly below its initial target. Link.

Elsewhere in energy and electrification

• The SunZia Wind and Transmission Project is now officially operational after nearly 20 years of development. Pattern Energy's 3.6 GW wind farm in eastern New Mexico, paired with a 550-mile high-voltage transmission line crossing into Arizona, is the largest renewable electricity project in American history, generating more power than the Hoover Dam. Link.

• U.S. battery energy storage installations in Q1 2026 surpassed the Q1 2025 record by 54%, reaching 3.3 gigawatts of new capacity across utility-scale, commercial, industrial, and residential segments, per Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power Association. Link.

• Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home announced a joint virtual power plant (VPP) offering with 16 gigawatts of dispatchable capacity available today, aggregated from home solar systems, batteries, and programmable thermostats. Sunrun and Renew Home paid out a combined $67 million in customer rewards last year from grid services earnings. Link.

• Ore Energy, a European iron-air battery startup competing with Form Energy, announced a 1-gigawatt-hour deal with Dutch utility Budget Thuis, with the first 400 MWh phase slated for 2028 delivery, building on the momentum from a successful grid-connected pilot with EDF earlier this year. Link.

• China Resources New Energy Holdings is set to raise $3.6 billion in what would be the largest IPO on record on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and China's biggest IPO in four years. The retail tranche was 683x oversubscribed. Link.

Policy

• China set a new target to source at least 50% of its electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2030, up from its prior goal of 42.3%. China also became the first country in history to surpass 4 terawatts of installed electricity capacity, with 62% of that now non-fossil. Link. Link.

• Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams lost his Republican primary to a fellow GOP challenger this week, driven largely by his approval of the Stratos data center (a Kevin O'Leary, of all people,-backed, 40,000-acre project that could consume up to 9 gigawatts) over intense public opposition on water, energy, and transparency grounds. The race adds to a growing list of state and local contests where data center backlash has flipped incumbents, including races in Alabama, Missouri, and Wisconsin. Link.

• Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called for a national moratorium on data center construction "until we can find a way to ensure they don't harm our nation's air, water, and power bills." A House subcommittee advanced the bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act by voice vote in the same week, a narrower measure that would require data center developers to cover grid upgrade costs rather than halt construction. Link.

• The Trump administration agreed to pay Invenergy $765 million to cancel its four offshore wind leases, bringing the total committed to cancel U.S. offshore wind development rights to over $2.5 billion across three deals. In exchange, Invenergy committed to build natural gas plants and geothermal projects. Legal experts remain skeptical the settlements comply with federal law; seven state AGs have already challenged an earlier deal in court. Link.

• A bipartisan Senate bill co-sponsored by Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Tom Cotton would prevent future presidents from interfering with already-permitted energy projects. The bill adds offshore wind coverage absent from the House version (the FREEDOM Act), strips a developer financial compensation mechanism in favor of court-appointed contractors, and extends fracking-style federal rule exemptions to enhanced geothermal projects. Link.

• The Trump administration paused its plan to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $386 million network of over 900 ocean sensors tracking climate, weather, and marine ecosystems, following bipartisan congressional pushback and a Senate vote to halt decommissioning. Although one array off Oregon had already been removed before the pause was announced, this is still a huge save. Link.

• California's single-use plastics packaging law, which requires phase-outs, higher recycling rates, and $5 billion in industry payments, has drawn simultaneous lawsuits from a 17-state industry coalition arguing undue burden, and from environmental groups arguing the law's recycling definition permits methods that create toxic waste. Link.

• A French court ordered TotalEnergies to disclose climate risks linked to its products and develop mitigation plans under France's 2017 corporate duty of vigilance law, giving the company six months to amend its vigilance plan to include end-user emissions. The ruling stopped short of halting new fossil fuel projects. Link.

Philanthropy

• Frontier, the carbon removal advance market commitment, announced $915 million in new buyer commitments. Anthropic is among the new buyers, and this marks its first public climate-related financial commitment, lifting hopes that AI companies will become enduring supporters of carbon removal. Link.

• Michael Bloomberg committed $285 million in philanthropic funding to accelerate wind and solar deployment in developed and emerging markets, targeting that the two technologies eventually generate more than half of electricity in countries responsible for 70% of global emissions. Funds will support industry trade groups, market design, data collection, and private capital mobilization. Link.

• The Bezos Earth Fund granted $26 million to the Earth Fire Alliance for its FireSat satellite-based wildfire detection initiative, the largest single philanthropic grant to wildfire detection to date. Three satellites are slated for launch this summer, with a longer-term goal of monitoring every point on Earth every 20 minutes by the early 2030s. Link.

Transportation

• For the first time ever in the U.K., EVs have outsold petrol cars over a rolling 12-month period: 516,490 new battery EVs were registered versus 504,010 petrol cars in the 12 months to May 2026, per Carbon Brief analysis. This comes even as the car industry pushes to water down the UK's ZEV mandate. Link.

• European EV registrations rose 34% year-on-year in May across 17 markets, partly driven by higher fuel prices from the Iran war, though some executives warned demand could soften if petrol prices fall. Link.

• Slate, the stripped-down EV pickup startup, revealed a $24,950 starting price and an updated battery strategy: dropping the optional 240-mile NMC pack in favor of a standard LFP pack bumped from 150 to 205 miles. The switch reflects how dramatically cheaper LFP chemistry (roughly 40% less expensive than NMC) has become over the last four years, despite the U.S. LFP supply chain’s continued reliance on China. Link.

• Polestar announced it will exit the U.S. market after the Department of Commerce blocked the company from selling new vehicles under a Biden-era rule barring Chinese-origin software in internet-connected cars. The company, controlled by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, had sought a compliance waiver but was rejected, making it the first major casualty of the rule. Link.

• Honda is cutting its entire North American EV effort as the company faces its first annual loss since 1957, which is expected to exceed $15.7 billion. Link.

• Lucid Motors is cutting 18% of its workforce (~1,500 employees) and eliminating a second production shift at its Arizona factory. Link.

• Mobileye announced it will launch its own robotaxi service in a major U.S. city starting in 2027, targeting a fleet of roughly 17,000 vehicles within five years. Link.

• Waymo recalled nearly 4,000 robotaxis and suspended highway driving after identifying 13 cases in which its vehicles drove into highway construction zones in Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area. This is the company's sixth robotaxi recall. Link.

• EV fuel cost savings over gasoline currently stand at roughly $1,500/year for U.S. drivers charging at home, with particularly strong economics in nine western states where gas prices run above the national average and electricity rates run below it. This may decrease again as gas prices fall in coming months given oil prices are down again as the conflict in Iran slowly winds down (for now). Link.

• Momenta, a 10-year-old Chinese autonomous driving developer backed by Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, GM, Bosch, and others, is preparing a Hong Kong IPO expected to raise approximately $900 million at a ~$9 billion valuation. Link.

Other noteable financing rounds

• Missed this a few weeks back → Nyobolt, based out of Cambridge, U.K., closed a $60 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation for its tungsten niobium oxide anodes. Link.

• Also missed this one almost a month ago → CMBlu, based out of Alzenau, Germany, raised a €50 million (~$57 million) in Series C funding for its redox flow batteries. Link.

• Verse, based out of San Francisco, raised a $54 million Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners to manage energy procurement and orchestrates on-site battery storage to help data centers and large power users secure and optimize power access. GV, NVIDIA, and Norrsken VC also invested. Link.

• Maritime Robotics, based out of Trondheim, Norway, raised a $32.5 million round led by MS+Partners, with EnvisionTech, Nysnø Climate Investments, and Umoe also participating, to develop autonomous surface vessels and modular sea drone platforms for offshore energy, surveying, and environmental monitoring. Link.

• Astral Systems, a five-year-old Bristol, U.K. startup that builds compact fusion reactors producing medical isotopes for cancer imaging and targeted therapies, raised a ~$30.3 million round led by Mercia Ventures, with Tees River, Daphni, Blast Club, Speedinvest, and Playfair also contributing. Link.

• Foundation Alloy, a Massachusetts-based metals startup that mechanically bonds metal powders in a solid-state process to produce alloys without melting ([ideally] dramatically reducing energy demand versus conventional methods), raised a $22 million Series A led by Voyager Ventures. The company is building a 36,000-square-foot factory in Massachusetts and a smaller facility in New Hampshire, targeting 100x capacity growth by 2027. Link.

• Superlight, based out of Seattle and the U.K., raised a $21 million Series A co-led by Engine Ventures and 2150 to build purpose-built electric trucks for middle-mile logistics. The company has raised $33 million in total. Link.

• Critical Energy, based out of Hawthorne, California, raised a $19 million seed round co-led by Susa Ventures and Upfront Ventures, with MaC Venture Capital, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Humba Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Underground Ventures also investing, to develop modular turbines for geothermal power plants. Link.

• Cuprum Metals, based out of Boulder City, Nevada, raised a $19.4 million Series A led by Lundin Family Office, with Woodline Partners and BHP Ventures also participating, for its water-based chemical leaching to recover copper from sulfide ores and mine tailings. Link.

• Ubotica Technologies, based out of Dublin, Ireland, raised an $11 million round co-led by Act Venture Capital and Greencode Ventures, with Atlantic Bridge also participating, to enable satellites to analyze Earth observation data onboard for maritime monitoring and offshore infrastructure threat detection. Link.

• Cactos, based out of Helsinki, raised €12.5 million (~$14.3 million) led by Union Square Ventures for its energy storage systems that use second-life batteries. JTel, Rando Ventures, Tesi, Hyundai, Silence VC, and FJ Labs also participated. Link.

• Aseon Labs, based out of Redwood City, California, raised a $10 million seed round led by Crane Venture Partners to develop automated pods to inspect, clean, and charge robotaxis. Y Combinator, Expa, Robin Hood Ventures, and Founders Capital also invested. Link.

Keep cool out there,

— Nick