An essay in The New York Times ponders whether the U.S. is simply going to abandon small coastal towns to the sea. The nonprofit Internal Displacement Monitoring Center identified 543,000 Americans at the end of 2022 who have not returned home after fleeing to escape a disaster. The enormous resources needed to build sea walls or levees are not generally available to rural towns and villages, suggesting that many such communities will have to relocate. “They could either do so on their own terms (if the government would help them), or wait until disaster renders their homes unlivable and their options much more dire.” In response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, President Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration to help American communities destroyed by drought. At present, it does not appear that the current federal government will respond in a similar fashion.

Knee Deep Times reports on the effort to protect the shoreline along San Francisco Bay south of SFO as sea level rises. The project is not only large but is complicated by four creeks and two lagoons, which need to drain water to the sea when it rains, and protect land and infrastructure from flooding during future high tides. The initiative is being led by the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District (it used to be just the flood control district, but had its enabling legislation changed to include addressing sea level rise). This is a sophisticated attempt to address the complex problem of sea level rise along a multiple-use shoreline that involves several government jurisdictions, including a major international airport.

The Washington Post reports on fires that spread quickly in South and North Carolina. “More fires spread across the eastern United States in 2024 than in all of 2023 — a year that had already seen 56 percent more acreage burned compared to an average year.” Eastern states are now experiencing dangerous fire weather more often, but historically have not invested in fire-prevention strategies, leaving more lives and structures at risk. The Guardian reports on brush fires that, as of March 8, were raging out of control on Long Island, forcing evacuations. The New York Times describes the damages from fires in Texas and Oklahoma.

Canary Media reports that “the U.S. grid added a total of just over 56 gigawatts of power capacity last year. A whopping 96 percent of that came from solar, battery, wind, nuclear, and other carbon-free installations.” This continues a trend that has been going on for years, making the U.S. grid less carbon-intensive as renewable expansion has been coupled with a reduction in coal-fired electricity. Inside Climate News describes where the electricity comes from in each state of the union, noting how much variation there is between the states. While Trump attempts to bolster fossil fuels and undercut renewables, state policies and trends are going to be important in determining our future electricity mix. The article notes that Texas is by far the leader in both fossil-fuel use and renewable-electricity production. Canary Media reports that Florida has now surged past California to become the state with the second-fastest growth in solar installations.

The Washington Post details how China became the leader of the global EV industry. 60% of the world’s electric cars, and 80% of EV batteries, are now produced in China. China sold almost 13 million electric or hybrid cars in 2024, which was four times the number sold by the United States. 40% of vehicle sales in China are now EVs. In a switch from the past, when “Chinese automakers hoped to secure technology from overseas, it is now increasingly common for international brands to seek out Chinese partnerships to gain an edge in electric vehicles.” The New York Times describes how the Trump Administration is going to attempt to use the Congressional Review Act, many people say illegally, to attempt to overturn California’s regulatory goal of preventing the sale of non-electric cars after 2035.

The Guardian describes the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina. “Asheville and its surrounding areas have been left vulnerable to floods, fires and extreme heat after Hurricane Helene uprooted thousands of trees that provided shade and protection from storms.” Asheville is among the fastest-growing small cities in the U.S., but many streets and neighborhoods are now completely without a tree cover. “Trees provide essential ecosystem services in urban areas including cooling, carbon sequestration, storm water management, wildlife habitat, air pollution capture and mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.”

Grist reports on a lawsuit filed by a group of farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for removing climate-related information from federal websites. The farmers contend that they depend on this information to keep their operations productive and profitable. As one farmer noted, “removing this information doesn’t make climate change go away, it just makes it harder for farmers to adapt.”

Most people realize that one of the challenges for an electrical grid with an abundance of wind and solar is how to provide power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. This has led to the enormous importance of batteries on the grid for storage. The widespread use of lithium-ion batteries for this purpose has a weakness in that they charge and discharge over a period of hours. Low production from renewable-electrical sources can continue for days. Grist reports on the development of long-duration storage technologies, including pumping, storing and releasing water to drive turbines when renewable-power production is low.

The Associated Press notes that China hit its goal of having 1,200 gigawatts of energy from renewables by 2030 six years early. And China’s fossil-fuel-power output may fall in 2025 for the first time in a decade, according to Reuters.

The New York Times describes the extraordinary expansion of solar power in Africa. “The $35 billion in loans from The World Bank, African Development Bank and other financial institutions, at below-market interest rates, are aimed at getting electricity to half of the 600 million Africans without it. About half the money will go toward village-level solar grids.” Given the growth of electricity use in Africa, this expansion has enormous implications for the climate of the future as 75% of grid electricity in Africa is derived from fossil fuels. The solar panels to power this transition will be coming from China, which now completely dominates global manufacturing in this sector.

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