The Trump administration is doing everything possible to crush California’s environmental policies that have been respected world-wide, New York Times reports. “Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have blocked California from setting its own limits on automobile pollution, which federal law has permitted since the 1970s. The Energy Department has announced $75 million for a new coal export terminal in Oakland, Calif. The Interior Department has paid energy companies to cancel planned wind farms off the coast of California and other blue states. The president ordered a company to restart a pipeline that caused one of the state’s largest oil spills in 2015.” And it goes on. Mr. Trump’s “destructive behavior has grown significantly,” said Jerry Brown, the former four-term Democratic governor of California who made climate change a signature cause. “It’s completely against a traditional Republican doctrine of respecting states’ rights.”
The BBC reports on a new UK trial to test whether AI can help with climate control, by predicting where warming contrails are likely to form and getting planes to avoid those areas. The 30-month Operation Blue Skies project brings together Google, the UK government, the Met Office, air traffic control provider National Air Traffic Services (NATS) and researchers at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. Contrails contribute to climate change (some say up to a third of all aviation climate warming), and scientists have been trying to work out how to stop them. Dr Paul Hodgson, Google’s technical lead for the operation, acknowledged there was uncertainty around the precise figure, but said scientists were confident it was “either quite a large problem or a very large problem”. Well, glad that’s clear.
The Financial Times reports on the economics of Europe’s on-going drought. According to the European Drought Observatory, an EU research body, around half of the EU and UK are now under some level of drought. But the cost counting has barely begun. “Experts at institutions ranging from Zurich Insurance to Tavoni’s think-tank estimate this year’s flash drought is likely to deal a short-term economic blow to Europe of at least €50bn, which could rise significantly if the water shortages drag on. The total toll of this summer’s heat is likely to be much more — as high as €180bn, according to one bank.” Interestingly, this drought wasn’t really expected. “When much of western Europe was hit by heavy rainfall at the start of this year, few expected that within months the region would suffer a severe drought. “The speed at which the 2026 drought transition is happening is most alarming,” says Balakrishnan Solaraju-Murali, a climate data specialist at Zurich Insurance. . . . In the past, if “reservoirs were full and soils were saturated by April, Europe was almost considered shielded against summer water shortages,” he says, but a wet winter is no longer enough to prevent a “summer disaster. Climate change has completely broken this framework.”
While it has been widely reported that some American clean energy projects (mainly wind farms) have been stopped by the Trump administration, the Financial Times reports that Trump has not succeeded in slowing down the momentum for growth in clean energy. “Clean energy additions will rise by a record 45 gigawatts this year, according to S&P Global Energy — equivalent to the average electricity demand of Turkey. The increase is roughly 25 per cent higher than the record set in 2024. . . . S&P said new solar and wind capacity will jump in 2026 by nearly a third and almost 50 per cent respectively. Solar will set another record in 2027, while wind falls back before recovering.” The FT notes that expectations for sharply higher electricity demand are also driving the pace of the rollout. “US power consumption is expected to grow 39 per cent by 2035, according to consultancy ICF, driven by energy-hungry data centres and the electrification of household appliances and transport. The surge comes after demand remained steady for more than a decade. . . . Solar and wind are among the quickest, cheapest forms of energy to add to the grid. According to RMI, a think-tank, new solar and wind sites have a lead time of less than two years, compared to at least three years to develop gas projects.”
Check out DEEP, the European Commission’s open-access database designed to reduce the perceived financial risk of investing in energy efficiency projects. Following a major update in July 2026, the database contains more than 89,000 projects, including over 60,500 building projects and more than 28,000 industrial projects.
In planning travel over the upcoming weeks, here are some useful ideas to help you along:
- Check out the Good Night Train website for the unique way to travel through Europe while you sleep.
- There’s never been a more important moment to travel right in Europe with masses of overdevelopment, cruise ships, walking pollution and captive cetaceans still hot topics when it comes to responsible tourism issues in Europe. Check out the Responsible Travel website.
- World Walks provides us with walking holidays in Europe.
- Cycling for Softies provides us with the 15 best cycling holidays in Europe in 2026.
- From Politico: One of Madrid’s best-kept secrets is just a 30-minute train ride from the capital. Alcalá de Henares, a historic city with roots stretching back to Roman times, is the birthplace of “Don Quixote” author Miguel de Cervantes — you can visit his reconstructed childhood home — and home to one of Spain’s oldest universities. Make sure to get deliberately lost in the ancient centre.
Henry James (1843-1916), an American-British author, regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, provides us with a summer smile: “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
EiD welcomes your views about this week’s selection of posts on the zero-carbon energy transition:
- The European Commission publishes a series of guidance documents to support CBAM implementation in the definitive period
- When the air gets cleaner in cities, children’s lungs recover
- The ‘forever chemicals’ hidden in the clean energy transition
- Too much doom, too little action
- Net zero needs standards — will ISO 14060 deliver?
- Cooling AI in the ocean — solution or new environmental problem?
- Buy European? voters would rather buy national
- The solar technology South Africa can’t afford to ignore
- The hidden carbon cost of choosing a home
- Europe’s wildfire future: prevention helps, but climate action is essential
Please send your comments on any of the posts. Please recommend EiD to your friends and colleagues.
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Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 