Oct 22, 2025, 2 pm CTRegister The US electrical grid is experiencing a rapid transition as cheap renewable electricity transforms the energy mix. With these grid changes, new supply is not spatially matched to demand, and the transmission network has become more strained. Better market integration could thus lower US generation costs. This talk will present results from two projects, estimating (1) the excess generation costs associated with transmission congestion and other spatial constraints; and (2) how generator profitability would change if spatial constraints were eliminated.

Read the full story from NPR. Kosiba says that climate change has delayed fall foliage by about a week since experts started monitoring it in the mid-20th century — around the time that "leaf-peeping" entered the modern lexicon.

Read the full story at Trellis. Procter & Gamble’s long-term chief sustainability officer, Virginie Helias, started her career as a marketer and brand manager, but she doesn’t think consumer products should be priced higher just because they have a lower environmental impact that may have cost more to achieve.

Read the full story at Ars Technica. In late 2017, a study by Krefeld Entomological Society looked at protected areas across Germany and discovered that two-thirds of the insect populations living in there had vanished over the last 25 years. The results spurred the media to declare we’re living through an “insect apocalypse,” but the reasons behind their absence were unclear. Now, a joint team of Japanese and Australian scientists have completed a new, multi-year study designed to get us some answers.

Read the full story at Trellis. See also the full report from Fashion Revolution. Household names like Aeropostale, Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters scored zero on disclosure of their decarbonization progress. For cutting supply chain emissions, 76 brands scored zero, while leaders like H&M, Oniverse, OVS and Puma showed limited but notable efforts. Only 6 percent of brands disclosed capital support for electrification, suggesting that suppliers are being left stranded.

Read the full story in The Guardian. See also the full report from Next 10. The climate emergency is significantly increasing costs for California households in the form of rising utility bills, lost wages and growing healthcare expenses, worsening the state’s affordability crisis, according to a sweeping new report. The average American born in 2024 will likely face up to $500,000 in additional lifetime costs from climate crisis, and those who experience more severe effects will see up to $1m in costs, the Costs of Climate Change: Financial and Economic Impacts on California report states.

The oil – and fossil fuel financing – continues to profitably flow. AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian by David L Levy, UMass Boston and Rami Kaplan, Tel Aviv University Another business-led effort to fight climate change is unraveling. On Aug. 27, 2025, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance suspended its activities after several major U.S. and European banks backed out. While most observers are blaming the…

Read the full story at Grist. For years, Chicago has been struggling to replace its lead pipes. The city has more than 412,000 confirmed and suspected lead service lines — the most of any city in the country — but it doesn’t anticipate replacing all its pipes until 2076, some 30 years after a federal deadline. The issue is particularly dangerous because lead plumbing can leach the toxic metal into drinking water, causing brain damage, developmental delays among children, and other harms. 

Read the full story at Grist. Summer is peak solar sales season, and crews canvass neighborhoods nationwide, generally in two-person teams. These door-knockers are there to set up an appointment with the “closer” — often on the same day — whose aim is to sell the homeowner a solar system. Door-to-door solar sales are a widely accepted form of lead generation in the industry, despite being largely unregulated.

Read the full story at Trellis. The brands are backing startups to test plant- and waste-based foams, rubbers and polymers. Soles are a hotspot for climate and micro-plastic impacts. EU’s Ecodesign rules and extended producer responsibility laws in Europe and California are pushing companies to design out waste and fossil-based plastics.

Read the full story at Canary Media. Since 2021, the Sierra Club has been grading U.S. utilities on their commitment to a clean-energy transition. While most utilities have not earned high marks on the group’s annual scorecards, as a whole they had been showing some progress. That’s over now. The latest edition of the Sierra Club’s ​“The Dirty Truth” report…

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. The grim death toll from heat waves across European cities this past summer would be captured in shocking headlines if they happened all at once, in a bombing or plane crash—835 in Rome, 630 in Athens, 409 in Paris. But many of the estimated 24,400 heat mortalities across hundreds of cities during June, July and August were “

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. When Solar Faithful launched projects in early 2023, its leaders estimated that around 30 of the nearly 10,000 houses of worship in Michigan used solar panels. Board member Steve Mulder said the nonprofit aims to increase that to about 350, a 3.5 percent rate on par with commercial and industrial use of solar panels. After nearly three years of work, the nonprofit estimates about 70 of the state’s religious buildings have solar panels.

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. As federal clean energy programs vanish under Trump, graduates of a reentry solar training program face an uncertain future.

Read the full story at Ars Technica. We’re about a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Summers across the global north are now defined by flash floods, droughts, heat waves, uncontainable wildfires, and intensifying named storms, exactly as predicted by Exxon scientists back in the 1970s. The United States secretary of health and human services advocates against using the most effective tool we have to fight the infectious diseases that have ravaged humanity for millennia.

Read the full story from Shenyang Agricultural University. Scientists found that biochar doesn’t just capture pollutants, it actively destroys them using direct electron transfer. This newly recognized ability accounts for up to 40% of its cleaning power and remains effective through repeated use. The discovery opens the door to cheaper, greener, and more efficient water treatment methods worldwide.

Read the full story from Shenyang Agricultural University. Bio-tar, once seen as a toxic waste, can be transformed into bio-carbon with applications in clean energy and environmental protection. This innovation could reduce emissions, create profits, and solve a major bioenergy industry problem.

A sunflower sea star may be about to snack on some sea urchins in California. Brent Durand/Moment via Getty Images by Rebecca Vega Thurber, University of California, Santa Barbara Before 2013, divers on North America’s west coast rarely saw purple sea urchins. The spiky animals, which are voracious kelp eaters,- were a favorite food of the coast’s iconic sunflower sea stars…

Read the full story at Canary Media. Glass-melting furnaces reach over 3,000°F. Most of that heat comes from burning fossil gas, but some manufacturers are looking to slash emissions by electrifying.

Read the full story in The Guardian. An expert team are resurrecting ice age ponds and finding rare species returning from a ‘perfect time capsule’

Read the full story at Grist. Utah laws cap wildfire damages and let utilities pass the cost onto customers. Utility lobbyists are pushing the model in other states.

Read the full story from the Colorado School of Mines. America already mines all the critical minerals it needs for energy, defense, and technology, but most are being wasted as mine tailings. Researchers discovered that minerals like cobalt, germanium, and rare earths are discarded in massive amounts, even though recovering just a fraction could eliminate U.S. dependence on imports.

Read the full story at Grist. A worker-owned cooperative is deploying PyroTowers to produce biochar, which helps farmers in the developing world improve their yields.

Read the full story at Inside Climate News. The colorful, venomous and mysterious Gila monster flourishes in the scorching Desert Southwest, but climate change threatens the lizards’ food, water and shelter. Moving to more hospitable habitats won’t be easy.

Read the full story at Ars Technica. Lots of people are excited about the idea of using plants to help us draw down some of the excess carbon dioxide we've been pumping into the atmosphere. It would be nice to think that we could reforest our way out of the mess we're creating, but recent studies have indicated there's simply not enough productive land for this to work out.