AP: Energy fallout from Iran war signals a global wake-up call for renewable energy

AP: Energy fallout from Iran war signals a global wake-up call for renewable energy.

It’s a simple equation: more renewables, less shocks. Reporting for the AP, Aniruddha Ghosal, Anton L. Delgado and Allan Olingo write:

The war in Iran is exposing the world’s reliance on fragile fossil fuel routes, lending urgency to calls for hastening the shift to renewable energy.

And

Unlike during previous oil shocks, renewable power is now competitive with fossil fuels in many places. More than 90% of new renewable power projects worldwide in 2024 were cheaper than fossil-fuel alternatives, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

It’s obvious, but bears repeating: countries that have built out or invested in renewables have also invested in a cushion from oil shocks, which are a trait of the fossil fuel-based energy system. These include China and India, and other Asian countries, too, including:

Pakistan’s solar boom has preempted more than $12 billion in fossil fuel imports since 2020

And

Vietnam’s current solar generation will help the country save hundreds of millions of dollars in potential coal and gas imports in the coming year, based on current high prices.

NYT: E.P.A. Moves to Weaken Limits on a Cancer-Causing Gas

NYT: E.P.A. Moves to Weaken Limits on a Cancer-Causing Gas.

Another thing that 49.9% of Americans voted for in 2024 – weakening the limits on emissions of the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide. From the New York Times report:

The agency’s proposed rule would loosen limits on ethylene oxide emissions from around 90 commercial sterilization facilities across the country. Roughly 2.3 million people live within two miles of these facilities in what are often low-income neighborhoods or communities of color, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group.

The proposal is the E.P.A.’s latest move to relax pollution limits in an effort to lower costs for industries. In recent months, the agency has also weakened restrictions on mercury from coal-burning power plants and repealed a scientific finding that allowed the government to regulate planet-warming pollution from cars and trucks.

Link.

NYT: Don’t Look Now, but the Green Transition Is Still Happening – Gift link

NYT: Don’t Look Now, but the Green Transition Is Still Happening – Gift link

As I often tell anyone within listening distance, the transition to renewables continues to grow and expand, and is unstoppable. That’s not to say that the lies, rhetoric and strong-armed tactics of the Trump administration and its climate change dismissive acolytes aren’t reversing some of the momentum and influencing policies around the world, or that the transition is happening fast enough, because it’s not, even in the remotest sense. But it’s not all doom and gloom either. David Wallace-Wells writes:

In January, a total of seven gas-powered cars were sold in all of Norway. This year, Pakistan expects that parts of the country will get more electricity from decentralized rooftop solar than from its entire electricity grid during parts of the day. In the United States, where we often tell ourselves we are in the grips of climate backlash and fossil fuel retrenchment, Texas has been setting new solar records through frigid February, around 90 percent of all new power capacity installed anywhere in the nation last year was green, and the share of renewables is expected to be even higher next year. The new “breakout star” of the battery world is the notorious petrostate Saudi Arabia, the countries with the biggest growth in solar power are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia’s breakneck pursuit of clean energy too cheap to meter is so far along that electricity prices in some regions have fallen by a third in a single year. 

Gift link.

It might just be the sun shining outside today, which always manages, even if only briefly, to renew a sense of optimism. Today, like Wallace-Wells, it’s transition optimism.

Euronews: Portugal tops EU leaderboard as over 80% of electricity in January came from renewables

Euronews: Portugal tops EU leaderboard as over 80% of electricity in January came from renewables

Fossil fuel merchants can keep throwing hurdles in the way, but the transition to renewables can’t be stopped.

Portugal has topped the EU leaderboard for renewable electricity thanks to surges in hydro and wind power. According to the Portuguese Association for Renewable Energies (APREN), a staggering 80.7 per cent of electricity generated in January 2026 came from renewable energy.

It marks the best record in nine months, since Portugal suffered a mass blackout that triggered nationwide chaos, and bumps the country up to second in Europe overall. Non-EU Norway came first, with 96.3 per cent renewable electricity production last month, while Denmark dropped to third place with 78.8 per cent.

Link.

Mother Jones: Putin Tried to Freeze Ukraine. Instead, He Sparked an Energy Revolution

Mother Jones: Putin Tried to Freeze Ukraine. Instead, He Sparked an Energy Revolution

Russia is bombing fossil-fueled power plants, so the country is building solar and wind. From the story:

Wind and solar arrays with independent transmission lines are scattered over the landscape, which makes them harder to hit and easier to repair. “A coal power station [is] a large single target that a single missile could take out,” says Jeff Oatham of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy company and its largest private energy investor. “You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.” 

“Attacking decentralized solar power installations is not economically rational,” says Ukrainian energy expert Olena Kondratiuk. “Missiles and drones are expensive, and significantly disrupting such systems would require a large number of strikes, while the overall impact on the energy system would remain limited.”

Link.