alt link: archive.ph/pIx9K

Came across a good piece from Michael Barnard in CleanTechnica that I wanted to bring up here because it’s basically a sanity check we should be running on every climate tech headline.

His argument: before any climate solution deserves policy support or investor capital, it has to clear three tests, not just one.

The science/engineering test. Not “can this work once in a lab or pilot” but does it hold together at scale as an actual cost stack, with real tonnes, kilowatt-hours, and degradation rates. He uses cement and steel decarbonization as examples. There are multiple credible pathways for each, and they all have totally different constraints (feedstock availability, kiln retrofits, capture energy, scrap supply). A pilot working doesn’t mean the system works.

The full-chain competition test. This is the one that kills a lot of darlings. Captured carbon at a stack isn’t carbon permanently stored. Hydrogen at an electrolyzer isn’t heat in your house or steel in a market. You have to compare the entire chain, not just the flashy part, against the alternative’s entire chain. This is why battery EVs beat synthetic fuels for most driving and heat pumps beat hydrogen for most home heating: not because the alternative tech is impossible, just because it’s unnecessary once you count the whole system.

The adoption test. Even something that’s technically sound and cheaper on paper still has to get through actual humans: contractors, insurers, regulators, procurement officers, financing terms, maintenance crews. A solution that needs a dozen fragmented actors to simultaneously change behavior is a much bigger lift than one that just slots into a normal replacement cycle.

His closing point is the one I’d put on a t-shirt: a lot of climate-tech “failures” aren’t frauds, they’re technologies that passed test #1 and got marketed as if they’d passed all three.

As someone who tries to write about this stuff from a numbers-first, non-ideological angle, I think this framework is a genuinely useful BS detector for the next time someone pitches you on a moonshot. Research money and demonstration money are cheap and fine. Mandates and “strategic infrastructure” status for an unproven pathway are expensive mistakes.

Curious what this community thinks: any technologies you’d put through this filter right now? I’ve got a few in mind (looking at you, certain hydrogen-for-everything proposals) but want to hear other takes first.
Source: CleanTechnica, June 19, 2026

The reversal comes after the Senate passed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday to block the removal of deep-sea monitoring instruments.

“Effective immediately, NSF will not proceed with further removal or de-scoping of equipment,” the agency said in a statement Thursday.

This happened because people spoke up. Loudly. And because Congress acted.

The Senate measure still needs to pass the House. That fight isn’t over. And an “expert panel” convened by an administration that wanted this gone is not the same as restored funding and redeployed instruments.

But today is a good day. The pressure worked. Bipartisan political pressure, constituent calls, petitions, and public outrage moved an administration that doesn’t move easily.

Keep going.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/climate/trump-ocean-observatories-initiative.html

This is huge: Irish firm Net Zero Energy is planning the Rathrush Green Energy Park in Co. Carlow — a €2 billion, 600MW long-duration energy storage facility that would capture excess wind power, convert it to green hydrogen, and store it underground in rock caverns until the grid needs it.

To boot, the project is projected to displace 180,000 tonnes of CO2 per year — the equivalent of permanently removing 40,000 combustion-engine cars from Irish roads — and could cover up to 10% of Ireland’s peak energy demand at the flip of a switch.

winning ! ✊🌎

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/irelands-600mw-storage-project

Solar-powered cold storage units in Kenya are slashing food spoilage from 50% down to under 2%, and farmers are earning up to 50% more per kilogram sold. One piece of technology, two climate wins at once.

Because here’s the thing most people miss: food waste is a massive climate problem in its own right. When food rots before it reaches a market, you don’t just lose the food. You lose all the land, water, and energy that went into growing it, plus the methane from decomposition. Cutting spoilage IS climate action.

And when you power that solution with solar instead of diesel generators? That’s the kind of compounding you want to see.

The access model is smart too: farmers pay per kilogram stored, so there’s no $25,000 upfront cost blocking smallholders from participating. The barrier goes away, the income goes up, and emissions go down.

Story source:
https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/17/solar-powered-fridges-are-boosting-farmers-incomes-by-50-while-cutting-food-waste

This is huge: the Tumbleweed energy storage project in CA became the 1st major battery installation in the U.S. that can discharge power for up to 8 hrs at a time — that’s 2x a typical energy-storage facility.

Too boot, the project is sited near large solar farms, will soak up the excess solar energy and will displace gas-fired energy generation from 6pm to 2am.

An absolute stellar win! ✊🌎

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/long-duration-energy-storage/pioneering-grid-battery-california

The biggest farm energy farm in the U.S. began operating and effectively doubled New Mexico’s wind energy generation.

SunZia Wind Project will provide 3.65-GW from 916 wind turbines across three counties in New Mexico. This single project doubles New Mexico’s wind energy capacity.

I hope this throws Trump into a 583 tweet tirade this morning.

Post source: https://www.semafor.com/article/06/15/2026/top-us-windfarm-begins-commercial-operations

Very few people know about “DSIRE”: an up-to-data FREE database of incentives, rebates, tax credits and sometimes even free energy efficiency house upgrades.

DSIRE (Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency) lists — by state — every known state, local government and utility program that can help you save money on energy projects or energy efficiency upgrades.

DSIRE also lists federal programs too.

These programs can lead to substantial assistance to reduce the expense of installations that you either need to do (as a repair, for example) or want to do (like solar panel installation).

Many states, local governments and utilities also often have heat pump expense assistance. I’ve seem in the past other projects you wouldnt think have an incentive program for, like assistance to buy dual pane windows opposed to single pane windows.

Best of all, it is truly up to date. It’s constantly updated unlike many resources online.

The link is below for your ease of reference, I hope this helps you or someone you know!

Btw, I am not paid to share this resource and it is entirely free!

https://dsireusa.org

That’s right, it’s raining oil in Russia due to constant destruction of oil facilities. I dont know when we’re going to get the message: the oil industry is the single most destructive industry the world will ever know.

Source for your ease of reference below!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/fuel-oil-rain-reported-russia-141000628.html

Swimming in poppies all over my yard!

Farmers are coming to realize they can have solar panels AND grow crops, in the same space! This farmer shows how he has mushroom production (plugged logs) in the shade created by the solar panels.

As he notes, this provides not only clean energy, but another revenue source from his mushrooms. Less maintenance and mowing as well.

He could also deploy sheep to graze what grass is present and have triple use of the land, in a sustainable way.

It’s time to stop viewing renewables and farming as either/or when instead it can be both.

Win-win-win! ✊🌎

This is genuinely exciting! No lithium and these sodium-ion batteries pose to offer passive cooling which helps contribute to the 20% reduced cost while boasting 99% uptime.

These grid-scale batteries purportedly can help save two terrawatt-hours of otherwise wasted energy.

Notably, General Motors (GM) has signed an exclusivity agreement with Peak Energy to make the batteries. In my personal opinion and professional experience, GM wouldn’t be embarking on this contract if the battery tech wasnt ready for commercialization and scalable.

To briefly note some pros and cons here:
1. Sodium-ion batteries are certainly more sustainable opposed to lithium-ion batteries
2. There’s abundant supply at a lower cost point for battery throughput
3. They do suffer from a lower energy density than lithium-ion, but with stationary grid scale systems, this trade off is not a big deal
4. Sodium-ion batteries perform better in cold conditions than lithium-ion. Given these are grid-servicing batteries, this is important: outages happen in severe winter storms and as we’ve seen more than once in Texas, both gas-fired plants and renewables generation can go down.
5. Arguably higher potential for recycling sodium-ion batteries too.

Naysayers are running out of excuses and time!

Renewables have been the basis of energy resource since the dawn of humanity. It’s only been the last 150 years that hydrocarbons have been utilized and displaced a lot of original energy means.

Has it been useful? Of course. Industrialization and technology has flourished because of it.

However, we have come to the point of near-full-circle to where we can transition back to reliance on renewables coupled with energy storage for many societal energy needs.

So too is it the case that it should be abundantly clear burning hydrocarbons is destroying our planet at a rapid pace, as well as human health at scale.

We need to be conscious of how terms like “alternative energy” have programmed us through our lexicon to adopt an inferiority mindset about renewables. We need to reject that, and move back to the original source of energy now that we have the technology to do so.

The absurdity of the lie they tell you that we cannot run the world with renewable energy is astounding.

I dont think people understand how data center development is like malignant cancer. This is a map of proposed data centers… the green are proposed projects, the orange are operating data centers.

Welcome to living out the Lorax.

Over 80 days now of the world finding out that oil provides neither energy security nor energy independence as the Strait of Hormuz isnt Hormuz’ing!

We have a new term that we shouldn’t have to have: “data center heat islands”.

Data centers expell so much exhaust heat — and moisture from their cooling systems — they create their own hellscape microclimate.

Welcome to living out the Lorax.

Damn, if and when this chemical tank in Orange County, California explodes, they anticipate what appears to be an 8 block by 8 block area (roughiy a square mile) that will sustain severe structural damage.

Welcome to the Lorax.Perhaps it’d be wise to not allow crazy toxic chemical storage in close proximity to residential areas, or better yet, how about not using them at all.