Current conditions: Tropical Depression Two is set to strengthen into Tropical Storm Bertha as the system widens over the Gulf Coast from Texas to Tampa Bay, Florida • Temperatures will top 112 degrees Fahrenheit in Khartoum, the capital of war-ravaged Sudan • Canadian wildfire smoke may have largely cleared in the Northeastern United States, but nearly 900 blazes are still burning, and Chicago is still under an air quality warning.
THE TOP FIVE
1. Britain’s incoming prime minister sticks to a controversial ban on oil and gas exploration
Feel the Burnham. Carl Court/Getty Images
Andy Burnham, the new leader of the British Labour Party and the likely next prime minister of the United Kingdom, has vowed to uphold a contentious ban on exploration licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. While deputy party leader Lucy Powell told the BBC on Sunday that fossil fuels from the North Sea would remain part of Britain's energy mix, the so-called “king of the north,” who previously led the industrial metropolis of Manchester as its mayor, has instead stuck by the party’s original plan. “If they don’t reverse the ban on new exploration then the industry will be very unhappy indeed,” one industry source told the Financial Times. The decision comes after rumors had swirled that Burnham may support increasing domestic fossil fuel production in a bid to bring down energy prices. In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump wrote: “The People of Aberdeen, in Scotland, are dancing in the streets because the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has stated that he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil!”
Scotland is, on the other hand, getting more of Trump’s least favorite energy source. The American president’s antipathy toward offshore turbines, so goes the lore, began with an unsuccessful bid to block a project he considered unsightly off the coast of his golf course there. Last week, Renewables Now reported that offshore wind developer Ocean Winds secured the Scottish government’s approval for a 2-gigawatt offshore wind farm called Caledonia, the name Romans gave the area of Britain that ultimately became Scotland and its frontier with England. Located 25 miles off Moray Firth, the project is poised to begin construction in 2030.
2. The EU rides to carbon removal’s rescue
In the U.S., the Trump administration has limited plans for carbon removal facilities. In Canada, as Emily has written, Prime Minister Mark Carney has opened the door to direct air capture companies looking for a new home base. But in the European Union, Brussels is already weaving carbon removal into the bloc's carbon-trading market. The EU’s highest governing body, the European Commission, proposed allowing carbon removal into its EU Emissions Trading System for the first time. “Under the current rules, companies cannot use carbon credits of any kind to comply with the regulations,” Emily wrote last week in a piece previewing the proposal. “But as 2040 grows closer, the EU plans to rely on carbon removal to offset some of the residual emissions from industries that are the most difficult to decarbonize.” For now, the scheme will be limited to direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration.
3. Blue states scramble to join companies’ lawsuit against Trump’s wind freeze
Last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James headed a group of Democratic-led states in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s deals to kill offshore wind projects, as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has written. Now many of those same blue states are seeking to join private developers’ litigation seeking to thaw President Donald Trump’s freeze on approving wind projects. Last week, the states filed a motion to intervene on behalf of wind companies that accuse the administration of unfairly targeting their businesses. The states argue, according to Bloomberg Law, that the halt to federal permitting “pushes up electricity costs” and “hurts their attempts to curb fossil fuel emissions.”
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4. Meta may soon power Claude
Claude-maker Anthropic is set to lease computing power for its artificial intelligence data centers from Meta, making what The New York Times described as “a potential step toward a new AI for the social networking company.” Under the deal, Anthropic would pay the Facebook parent company $10 billion over two years, in monthly increments. The agreement is roughly a third the size of the deal that the AI giant signed with Elon Musk’s xAI in May for $45 billion of computing power over three years. That deal has drawn blowback given the vast arrays of gas turbines that power xAI’s biggest data center, Colossus, which is the subject of an air pollution lawsuit filed by the NAACP. As for Meta, insiders Heatmap talked to at the end of last year put it in the bottom of hyperscalers based on its decarbonization efforts. One social scientist told us, “Google is the best, Meta is the worst. Evil corporation.”
5. Russia has 18 nuclear projects underway at home
Russia’s state-owned nuclear company has at least 18 new nuclear projects underway at home, Rosatom announced. The Kremlin-owned company said the projects are in “various stages of implementation” throughout Russia, and don’t count the more than two dozen under construction overseas in places such as Bangladesh, India, and Turkey. In a speech published in the company’s in-house magazine and shared with World Nuclear News, Rosatom Director General Alexei Likhachev said the firm aims to increase revenues to $51.3 billion by 2028 — a nearly 18% increase from this year. Improving profits, however, means reducing costs by 5% that same year.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s nuclear regulator, Rostekhnadzor, has issued licenses for the first two proposed units of the new Kola nuclear station in northwest Russia, near Finland. The plant is expected to begin construction next year, NucNet reported, and ultimately include four VVER-S medium-capacity pressurized water reactors.
THE KICKER
Tesla has a fierce new competitor in the European market. The Chinese automaker Xpeng just released its compact L03 crossover. The starting price in the German market, $40,700, undercuts the Tesla Model Y’s $44,480. The vehicle, per InsideEVs, is the first Chinese car to be fully integrated with Google Maps.
Feel the Burnham. Carl Court/Getty Images 
