A new energy storage plant featuring sodium- and lithium-ion batteries has opened in China's Yunnan province.

The energy storage station, operated by China Southern Power Grid, is approximately 33,333 square meters in size and features over 150 battery compartments, according to CnEVPost.

The station's leader told news agency Xinhua that it has a top response speed that's six times faster than other sodium-ion batteries. It can also store up to 800,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, which is enough to power approximately 270,000 households.

PV Magazine explained that the station can serve over 30 wind and solar plants to mitigate the impact of intermittent supply. The article highlighted that the power station can adapt to changing energy access and stabilize delivery.

Combined, these benefits make it easier for cities, companies, and everyday people to have an energy source they can rely on. And one they can trust to release less planet-warming pollution than dirty fuels such as coal, oil, and gas.

As the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” eliminates many clean-energy incentives in the U.S., China continues huge investments in wind and solar power, reportedly accounting for 74 percent of all projects now under construction worldwide.

Something remarkable is happening beneath the waves off the coast of Rhode Island. What began as an offshore energy project has quietly turned into a massive, unexpected win for marine life. According to Chris Buxton, writing for Daily Kos, the five wind turbines near Block Island have triggered a boom in fish populations, transforming turbine foundations into thriving artificial reefs.

Fishermen were skeptical at first. But after the turbines went up in 2016, local Captain Hank Hewitt noticed black sea bass returning in record numbers. Within two years, their population had increased tenfold near the turbine sites. Other species like porgies and cod followed, drawn to the mussel-covered pylons and protected underwater spaces.

Science backs the fishermen’s stories. A seven-year study monitoring over 600,000 fish from 61 species found no harm to marine life—only growth. Similar results have been seen in Europe, where Danish and Belgian wind farms now host booming underwater communities.

President Trump directed the Treasury Department on Monday to take a strict approach to limit which projects are eligible for wind and solar tax credits.

The recently passed Republican megabill ends the tax credits for wind and solar projects unless solar or wind farms start producing electricity by 2028 — or unless they start construction in the next year.

Trump’s executive order tells his administration to limit which projects can count as having started construction.

Submerged in about 40 meters (44 yards) of water off Scotland’s coast, a turbine has been spinning for more than six years to harness the power of ocean tides for electricity — a durability mark that demonstrates the technology’s commercial viability.

Keeping a large, or grid-scale, turbine in place in the harsh sea environment that long is a record that helps pave the way for bigger tidal energy farms and makes it far more appealing to investors, according to the trade association Ocean Energy Europe. Tidal energy projects would be prohibitively expensive if the turbines had to be taken out of the water for maintenance every couple of years.

Tidal energy technologies are still in the early days of their commercial development, but their potential for generating clean energy is big. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, marine energy, a term researchers use to refer to power generated from tides, currents, waves or temperature changes, is the world’s largest untapped renewable energy resource.

Walk outside into 100-degree heat wearing a black shirt, and you’ll feel a whole lot hotter than if you were wearing white. Now think about your roof: If it’s also dark, it’s soaking up more of the sun’s energy and radiating that heat indoors. If it were a lighter color, it’d be like your home was wearing a giant white shirt all the time.

This is the idea behind the “cool roof.” Last month, Atlanta joined a growing number of American cities requiring that new roofs be more reflective. That significantly reduces temperatures not just in a building, but in the surrounding urban environment. “I really wanted to be able to approach climate change in the city of Atlanta with a diversity of tactics,” said City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari, who authored the bill, “because it’s far easier to change a local climate than it is a global one.”

Extreme weather seems to make the headlines almost every week, as disasters increasingly strike out of season, break records, and hit places they never have before.

Decades of scientific research has proven that human-caused climate change is making some disasters more dangerous and more frequent. The burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal releases carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat, warms the planet, and alters the conditions in which extreme weather forms. These changes are happening more rapidly than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to climate records.

Below, we break down what experts know — and what they don’t — about the connections between climate change and flooding.

Update: President Trump signed the domestic policy and tax bill into law on Friday, July 4.

“These bills are an affront to our sovereignty, our lands, and our way of life. They would gut essential health and food security programs, roll back climate resilience funding, and allow the exploitation of our sacred homelands without even basic tribal consultation,” said Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Tlingit and Haida in Alaska, in a statement. “This is not just bad policy — it is a betrayal of the federal trust responsibility to tribal nations.”

Tribes across the country are particularly worried about the megabill’s hit to clean energy, complicating the development of critical wind and solar projects. According to the Department of Energy, tribal households face 6.5 times more electrical outages per year and a 28 percent higher energy burden compared to the average U.S. household. An estimated 54,000 people living on tribal lands have no electricity.

Addressing a crowd outside the White House on Friday (4 July), the US president said: “China’s right now building 68 coal-generating plants, and we’re putting up wind … It does not work, aside from ruining our fields and our valleys and killing all the birds, being very weak and very expensive – all made in China.”

Commenting on “all the windmills that China sends us”, he then went on to claim: “I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that?”

Well, the reality is that they are there, because the country is described as the “global renewable energy leader” due to it hosting “nearly half of the world’s total operating wind and solar capacity” – per a 2023 report from the non-profit research organisation, Global Energy Monitor.

The same report notes at the time of its publication in June that year, the combined onshore and offshore wind capacity of China had doubled from what it was in 2017, surpassing 310 gigawatts.

And according to the energy think tank Ember, China accounted for more than half of the global increase in both wind and solar power last year.

The American clean power industry is thriving and making a significant contribution to the U.S. economy thanks to policies of the Biden-Harris administration, as well as the highly competitive prices and speed with which clean power systems and energy storage can be currently installed. But the industry is now facing an all-out assault from President Donald Trump.

His signature “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Trump signed into law on July 4, heavily targets the industry, which Trump has labeled the “green new scam.” The legislation eliminates a 30 percent tax credit for residential rooftop solar panels by the end of 2025, as well as those dedicated to utility-scale solar and wind, although plants that are already financed and approved by June 2026 — or that are operational by 2027 — can still qualify for the credits. (The credit for solar leasing companies will also last through 2027 and can be passed through to consumers.) The bill also eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles and chargers, as well as battery storage systems, geothermal heating, electric panel upgrades, energy audits and weatherization, all of which can lower consumer’s energy bills.

In a last minute move, however, Republicans struck a proposed excise tax on wind and solar projects if the materials included a percentage of minerals sourced from certain foreign countries. Experts say that, regardless of the excise tax reprieve and the included grandfather provisions, the clean energy industry will be badly hurt and consumers’ energy prices could rise by eight to 10 percent.

Australian-based renewable energy and storage investor Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners says its new 373 MW Cleve Hill Solar Park – the biggest in the UK – has begun commercial operations.

The Cleve Hill solar park, situated in Kent in England’s south, consists of over 550,000 solar panels and is expected to provide clean electricity equivalent to the needs of 102,000 homes, and is being hailed as a landmark on multiple fronts.

It is four times the size of the next largest operational UK solar project, and will also feature a 150 MW co-located battery energy storage system (BESS), making it also the largest co-located solar plus storage project ever constructed in the UK power market.

Cleve Hill was also the first solar and battery storage project to be consented as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) by the UK government, and secured the first solar contract for difference (CfD) by the UK Government-backed Low Carbon Contracts Company.

Critics of the 'green transition' argue it is imposing an unacceptable cost on ordinary working people. But is it really renewable technologies that are causing our bills to go up, or are there other forces involved? We scratch the surface and take a look.