court tosses Trumps claim of ‟energy emergency”, hardening shorelines leads to greater erosion, transition from fossil fuels will be revenue problem for some countries, natural-gas usage continues to decline in California, electric bikes and mopeds are changing the world

Grist reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has ruled there is no ‟energy emergency” requiring old coal plants to continue operations. The case concerned the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell plant in West Olive, Michigan, which ‟is one of seven fossil fuel plants around the country that the Trump administration has forced to stay in operation, despite the pollution they cause and the enormous costs of keeping them online.” Trump has been invoking rarely-used powers to force these plants to stay open, ‟arguing that the threat of outages, along with the need for more energy to power data centers, constituted an emergency.” Trump’s order has cost the Consumers Energy Company $259 million, and it is trying to recover these expenses from its customers in Michigan and 10 other states.

The New York Times notes that the case was brought by the states of Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, along with a coalition of environmental groups. In the ruling, Judge Cornelia Pillard ‟emphasized that it’s up to states to decide how to manage power generation, and that the federal government should only intervene when states and grid operators are unable or unwilling to respond.”

The New York Times reports further that the Trump Administration’s policy of using emergency powers to force coal-fired power plants to keep operating had its origins in a letter from a coal-industry lobbying group. This is not surprising, given how unpopular and detrimental these orders are to the utilities and ratepayers. Despite courts having found them to be unlawful, the Administration continues to renew and expand this effort, saddling ratepayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in costs as utilities scramble to keep these old, inefficient units operating to be in compliance with federal orders…

1.5°C target is now unattainable, August 2026 ties as the hottest month ever, painful water cuts coming to the Colorado River basin, solar produces more energy per acre than corn for ethanol, North Dakota puts the brakes on wind power

In a surprise to nobody who has been paying attention, The New York Times reports on a United Nations assessment concluding that the world will not be able to prevent warming from exceeding a global average of 1.5°C. ‟A decade ago, most of the world’s countries agreed in Paris to try to limit global temperature rise to “well below” two degrees Celsius while aiming for the more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. But Wednesday’s 141-page U.N. report warned that the world is certain to breach that mark and should focus on finding ways to limit “overshoot” and eventually bring global temperatures back down.” Achieving the 1.5°C target now would require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a scale not feasible with current technology. The U.N. goes on to note that, with current policies, the planet will likely warm by 2.6°C (4.7°F) by the end of the century. This means extreme events like heat waves, floods and droughts will intensify, and the risk of weakening or collapsing critical ocean currents rises. If the latter changes occur, the U.N. concludes, it will ‟reshape the world forever.”

Consistent with long-term projections of temperature rise, The New York Times notes that August 2026 has tied July 2023 for the hottest month ever recorded. The hot August made 2026 the warmest summer on record for both Western Europe and the contiguous United States. ‟Temperatures soared into the triple digits across the southern United States from California to Texas,” and South Korea recorded its highest temperature reading in modern history (108.5°F). August was also the hottest month ever recorded for the world’s oceans. ‟This extra warmth will spread to the rest of the planet in the months ahead, making the globe’s average temperatures likely to break more records through the end of the year and into 2027.”

The New York Times explains the recent proposal from the federal government to address declining water availability in the Colorado River basin. Under this plan, ‟communities and farms across Arizona, Nevada and California face potentially drastic cuts in the water they can use from the Colorado River over the next decade.” The Times reports that the state of Nevada has already sued the federal government, claiming the proposal unfairly burdens Nevada while not suggesting any mandatory water restrictions on the upper-basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico…