Inside Climate News

Renewable energy advocates point to a 2021 law and state dollars as reasons for optimism in a challenging time.

By Douglas J. Guth

Illinois saw unprecedented solar growth in 2024, adding 2.5 gigawatts of capacity to nearly double its total generation potential from the year before. But this year, the state faces some big speed bumps.

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Firefighters, heroic tenants and a change of winds spared a home on Quadro Vecchio Drive in Los Angeles during the January wildfires. What comes next for the home—and the families who love it—is complicated.

Story and photos by Nina Dietz

After the Fires*: Second in a series about health risks following the Los Angeles wildfires that destroyed Pacific Palisades and Altadena. This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.*

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Now that hurricane season has arrived, hundreds of waste lagoons could be flooded by climate-amplified storms, threatening yards, drinking water wells, rivers, creeks and wetlands.

By Lisa Sorg

As soon as the skies clear after a hurricane hits eastern North Carolina, Larry Baldwin climbs in the passenger seat of a single-engine plane, usually with his friend and pilot Rick Dove, and surveys the industrialized swine farms inundated with flood water.

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Planned programs to protect dunes and beaches on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens are eroded by broken promises from Trump’s EPA.

By Lauren Dalban

Adriana Jovanovic clambered cheerfully over the metal railing next to the dunes along Rockaway Beach. She landed in a patch of sand where she and her team, nicknamed the “dune squad,” had sown native roses and goldenrod among other native plants.

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Residents in majority-Black north Birmingham, Alabama, have long been subjected to industrial pollution. The new administration has cut funding for a program aimed at measuring the impact.

By Lee Hedgepeth

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—When Jilisa Milton received the grant termination letter, she wasn’t surprised. She suspected this day would come.

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Much has been learned about heat-resistant corals in the last decade. Village by village and beach by beach, reef restoration is progressing.

Interview by Aynsley O’Neill, “Living on Earth”

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by producer Aynsley O’Neill with Steve Palumbi, Stanford University professor of biology and oceans.

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The U.S. Department of Energy rescinded $3.7 billion in clean energy grants last week, saying the projects selected would not generate a positive return on investment.

By Dennis Pillion

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Two iron pipe manufacturers in Alabama learned last week they lost a combined $150 million in promised federal funding that would have increased productivity and employment while slashing greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollution.

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Researchers are increasingly relying on data from citizen scientists to analyze trends in the environment.

By Kiley Price

In April, more than 100,000 people from nearly 700 cities around the world set out on a mission to document as many plants and animals as they could in their urban environments.

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A clean energy transition will require loads of minerals. In a new report, academics say a global minerals trust would ensure fair access, a reliable market and prevent unnecessary mines.

By Carrie Klein

Minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper are essential to building clean energy technology. Without them, there can be no solar panels, no electric vehicles, no wind turbines and no batteries.

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The administration is leaning into fossil fuel solutions for growing power demand, with support from grid operators.

By Marianne Lavelle, Carrie Klein

The newest player on the U.S. coal scene, Core Natural Resources, had good news and bad news for investors when it announced its results for the start of the year.

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The Massachusetts island anticipates damages of $3.4 billion through 2070 if nothing is done.

By Nicole Williams

NANTUCKET—It’s no longer unusual to see a kayaker paddling along downtown Easy Street. The cobblestones along the town’s waterfront once were flooded a handful of times a year. That rose to an average of 37 days a year by 2020, according to tide gauge monitors by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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Residents of small Pacific island nations rely on tuna for local jobs and foreign fishing fees, which fund education, healthcare, roads and more. Amid climate change, fishermen have been working harder to catch fewer fish and it’s getting worse.

By Nathan Eagle, Honolulu Civil Beat

This story was produced by Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit news organization covering Hawaiʻi that specializes in accountability and in-depth enterprise coverage. For more stories like this, subscribe to their newsletters.

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There were at least 100 heat-related deaths in Washington state during the unprecedented heat wave, among them Juliana Leon. Her estate has filed the first ever wrongful death case related to climate change against oil companies in the U.S.

By Dana Drugmand

The daughter of a woman who was killed by extreme heat during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against major oil companies claiming they should be held responsible for her death.

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Warrior Met, an Alabama coal company with a checkered safety and environmental record, wants to mine thousands of tons of federally owned coal. Now it’s the public’s turn to weigh in.

By Lee Hedgepeth

BERRY, Ala.—The federal Bureau of Land Management, the agency charged with overseeing the nation’s coal reserves, has released a draft environmental impact statement outlining the potential effects of a proposed expansion of Warrior Met’s longwall coal mining projects in central Alabama.

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At the One Ocean Science Congress, scientists offer ten key recommendations for protecting and restoring marine ecosystems suffering from climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

By Teresa Tomassoni

NICE, France—As world leaders prepare to attend the third U.N. Ocean Conference here next week, scientists are urging them to take action to combat a dual climate and biodiversity crisis plaguing marine ecosystems, and base their decisions on the best available science.

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The Inflation Reduction Act led to growth in manufacturing jobs, with most benefits going to GOP-voting states. But Republicans have done little to stop a repeal.

By Dan Gearino

One of the largest manufacturing investments in Ohio’s history has transformed cornfields in a rural county into a battery factory that could soon have thousands of employees.

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Not so long ago, developers of the massive server farms talked about powering them with wind and solar power. But now, with the coming of power-hungry AI platforms, they’re bypassing the grid, building their own gas-fired power plants on site.

By Dylan Baddour, Arcelia Martin

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas—Abigail Lindsey worries the days of peace and quiet might be nearing an end at the rural, wooded property where she lives with her son. On the old ranch across the street, developers want to build an expansive complex of supercomputers for artificial intelligence, plus a large, private power plant to run it.

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More than half of global mining projects for “energy transition” minerals are located on or near Indigenous territories. Indigenous advocates argue the world can’t solve climate change—a problem caused by extractivism—with more extractivism.

By Katie Surma

Metals and minerals form the backbone of low-carbon energy technologies like solar panels, grid infrastructure and car batteries.

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New York is poised to see an expansion of its gas infrastructure. This could have far-reaching implications.

By Lauren Dalban

A new study published this week in the journal Risk Analysis found that gas leaks are not only hazardous on a local level, but are also “a driver of broader regional pollution dynamics through spillover” to neighboring states.

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The U.S. Department of Energy says the plant, fueled by oil and gas, will help avert an energy “emergency.” Environmentalists say there’s no such crisis.

By Jon Hurdle

A half-century-old Pennsylvania power plant fueled by oil and natural gas will keep running beyond its scheduled shutdown date following an order from the Trump administration just one day before it was due to retire.

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Scientists are just beginning to understand how extreme weather can give pathogens an upper hand, underscoring the urgent need for the type of research canceled by the Trump administration.

By Liza Gross

Scientists have long known that changes in temperature can affect the risks and spread of infectious diseases by altering the biology and behavior of pathogens and their hosts, from butterflies to people. And evidence that climate change can exacerbate more than half of known human pathogenic diseases has underscored the urgency of understanding how extreme heat shapes disease outcomes.

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As the Cahaba’s “‘charismatic” namesake lily blooms, an old festival and a new musical tribute celebrate Alabama’s longest free-flowing river.

By Lee Hedgepeth

WEST BLOCTON, Ala.—“The lilies have bloomed this season if you know where to go.”

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A draft rule would have allowed discharge of 84,000 gallons of treated produced water per day. The New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission backtracked to take a more cautious approach.

By Carrie Klein

After months of deliberation, the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission on May 14 voted to prohibit any discharge of treated “produced water” from oil and gas extraction to ground and surface waters.

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On the opening day of a global science conference, French fishery scientist Clea Abello presented research showing that marine protected areas could protect commercially valuable fisheries.

By Teresa Tomassoni

NICE, France—More than 2,000 scientists, advocates and policymakers from at least 100 countries convened this week at the One Ocean Science Congress, warning of a mounting marine crisis and promising recommendations to solve it—not only for the sake of life below the surface, but for the entire planet.

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It’s the latest Big Tech company to secure electricity from nuclear as power demand grows.

By Arcelia Martin

Facebook’s parent company Meta locked in 20 years of nuclear power on Tuesday from Constellation Energy to help meet the tech giant’s surging energy demand for artificial intelligence and its other power-intensive computing needs.

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