I don’t need to tell you that it was hot in March, as we essentially had summer temperatures at the end of winter (Yale Climate Connections calls it one of the most ‟meteorologically stunning extreme events this century”). The AP reports that March 2026 was in fact the most abnormally hot month in U.S. history. In addition to being the hottest March ever, it also exceeded historic averages more than any other period in the U.S. weather record.

And don’t look now, but El Niño conditions are building in the Pacific Ocean. The Washington Post notes that oceanographic modeling is predicting the possibility of a ‟super El Niño,” meaning the impacts (heat, droughts, floods, altered hurricane dynamics and reduced sea-ice extent) will be more severe and persistent. This implies that 2027 will likely be the hottest year ever recorded. While there is still uncertainty in the forecast (we will have more information by mid-summer), it is important to realize that due to the higher concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the heat released from the ocean to the air during El Niño cannot escape the atmosphere as easily, and this intensifies impacts. The San Francisco Chronicle explores what this means for precipitation in California and the American Southwest. While there are hopes that heavy rain and snowfall could help alleviate drought conditions, intense rain brings its own problems (the 1997-98 El Niño winter killed 17 and caused over $800 million in damage). I recommend Bill McKibben’s analysis of what might be in store (your favorite adult beverage should be probably be close at hand).

The New York Times reports that the Trump Administration has sued the state of California over its automobile regulations. Trump is arguing that ‟the restrictions would unlawfully force a rapid transition to electric vehicles in the state.” The suit is focused upon California because 11% of U.S. auto sales occur in the state, and EVs are becoming more popular here. In the third quarter of 2025, 29.1% of new car sales in California were EVs. That was the highest quarter-sales share ever reported in California. Meanwhile, ‟California is suing the Trump administration in federal court to defend its authority to ban sales of gas cars.”

Grist reports that ‟projects totaling more than 1,000 gigawatts of gas-fired power are now in development worldwide. This is a 30% percent jump in just the last year, with a quarter of this in the U.S.” The anticipated proliferation of data centers is fueling much of this demand, particularly in Texas, where the 58 GW being planned is ‟more than the next four states combined, and more than every country on Earth except for China.” How much of this planned capacity will be built is still an open question. While utilities often have incentives to build new power plants, increased end-use efficiency and demand management can be cheaper. Grist describes the results of another study that concludes that ‟by 2040, utility-driven efficiency programs could cut usage by about 8 percent, or around 70 gigawatts, and that making those cuts currently costs around $20.70 per megawatt. The cheapest gas-fired power plants now start at about $45 per kilowatt generated.”

The Trump Administration announced it is paying French energy company TotalEnergies $1 billion to give up the federal leases it obtained to develop offshore wind in New York and North Carolina. As Paul Krugman noted, ‟the Interior Secretary claimed that wind power is expensive and unreliable; but in that case why is it necessary to pay private companies not to develop it?” Canary Media notes that there are serious questions about whether this proposal is legal. Grist concludes that ‟the government is paying TotalEnergies to halt a wind farm it isn’t building, in exchange for fossil fuel investments it’s already making.”

While attacks on offshore-wind projects have received extensive news coverage, Inside Climate News reports that onshore ‟wind energy development has all but ground to a halt in the face of community opposition, a phaseout of federal tax credits and the Trump administration’s actions to slow the approval of federal permits.” The article explores in detail the development of community opposition, which appears to have multiple roots (Canary Media describes a ballot initiative in Ohio that is trying to overturn a ban on wind and solar in Richland County). Iowa led the country in wind power in 2024, with 63% of its electricity coming from this source. Indeed, a silhouette of a wind turbine is on the state license plate. But now, ‟58 of Iowa’s 99 counties have rules designed to limit wind power development, including many of the counties with the strongest wind resources.” Meanwhile, Canary Media notes that five New England states are collaborating to develop 1.2 GW of wind in northern Maine. One of the challenges of this development is that this part of Maine (Aroostook County) is not on the national grid, and so a new transmission line will be required as part of the project.

With the federal government retreating from climate regulation, the states are going to play a more important role. The New York Times visits Colorado, where the state tax credit for EVs recently has been increased. The article also reviews other state actions to achieve greenhouse-gas reduction targets, despite the federal government’s abdication of its regulatory responsibilities.

New evidence of the global energy transition that is underway comes from California, where on March 29 during the evening peak over 42% of the state’s electricity was supplied by batteries as reported by Inside Climate News. The growth in utility-scale batteries is extraordinary, and Texas has just passed California with the largest installed capacity. ‟The country added 18,925 megawatts of battery storage last year, a 52 percent increase from the prior year.” Canary Media notes that, because of the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act that remain untouched by Trump, ‟the country soon will be able to produce enough grid batteries to meet that surging demand on its own.” One analyst describes this achievement as ‟a fundamental shift from where we were just a year and a half ago, when the majority of battery storage systems were imported.” One reason this has happened so quickly is because of the Trump Administration’s removal of incentives for EVs. Many battery manufacturers retooled their plants to produce grid batteries instead of EV batteries.

In 2007, British economist Nicholas Stern was the senior author of an important report on the cost of climate change. An editorial in Nature describes his conclusion: ‟Stern estimated that the cost of paying for damages from extreme storms, protecting coastal communities from rising sea levels, dealing with unlivable heat in many parts of the world and the like would cost between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product (GDP) per year. By contrast, the costs associated with reducing planet-warming emissions were projected to be just 1% of GDP annually.” The editorial notes that 20 years after the report, Stern’s projections have turned out to be conservative, ‟yet many higher-income countries are seriously backsliding on their promises, with some politicians viewing investments that aim to reach ‘net zero’ emissions as an expensive folly at a time of economic turmoil. Two decades on from the Stern Review, one key lesson is clearer than ever: delaying action only increases the costs for future generations. But another is that those in possession of the evidence must get out there and communicate it. Without action, the risks — and costs — will continue to rise.”

And so, I’ve posted and you are reading another edition of In Brief Climate News!

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