Energy & Climate

At an April 16 House Appropriations hearing, Energy Secretary Chris Wright pledged that the first five to ten new planned US nuclear reactors will almost certainly receive financing from the DOE lending office, directing the agency's renamed loan authority toward first-of-a-kind projects.

ERCOT's preliminary 2026-2032 load forecast filed April 15 projects peak demand reaching 367,790 MW, more than four times the current record, with data centers accounting for over 60% of the projected growth. CEO Pablo Vegas and the PUCT say the number is almost certainly too high.

Great British Energy-Nuclear and Rolls-Royce SMR signed a contract on April 13 to begin design and delivery of three 470 MW pressurised water reactors at Wylfa in North Wales, targeting grid connection by the mid-2030s.

Climate models increasingly project a super El Nino emerging by late summer 2026, with roughly half of ECMWF ensemble members forecasting sea surface temperature anomalies exceeding 2.5 degrees Celsius, which could make it the strongest event in recorded history.

AECC's AEP100 liquid hydrogen turboprop completed a 16-minute maiden flight in Zhuzhou, producing zero carbon emissions and establishing China's lead in hydrogen aviation propulsion.

MIT spinout Quaise Energy plans to extend its record-setting millimeter wave drilling from 118 meters to one kilometer this year, advancing a technology that could unlock superhot geothermal energy virtually anywhere on Earth.

Microsoft staff have informed carbon removal developers that the company is pausing new purchases, a move that rattles a market in which the tech giant accounted for 96 percent of 2025 credit purchases.

The startup's chemically tailored boron polymer membranes already achieve the U.S. Department of Energy's 2031 efficiency target of 77 percent for proton exchange membrane electrolysis, while partner tests show a 60 percent reduction in operating costs.

The International Renewable Energy Agency's latest data shows the world added a record 692 gigawatts of renewable power capacity in 2025, bringing renewables to 49 percent of total global installed capacity and within reach of the halfway mark for the first time.

The DOE backs SHINE's Chrysalis plant in Wisconsin, which aims to end U.S. dependence on imported molybdenum-99 using fusion neutron generators.

Vineyard Wind filed suit against GE Renewable Energy after the turbine manufacturer moved to terminate service contracts, escalating a dispute rooted in a catastrophic 2024 blade failure that set the project back nearly two years.

Data from the now-silent MethaneSAT satellite shows global oil and gas methane emissions far exceed inventories, prompting a U.S. Senate probe into Permian Basin operators.