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Category: Renewable energy/fossil fuels

Solar panels that plug into your wall are about to take off

Solar panels that plug into your wall are about to take off

National Geographic reports: On a quiet street in suburban South Salt Lake City, Utah, the stirring of an energy revolution is taking shape. There, outside the spare bedroom of an unassuming, thousand-square-foot midcentury home sit three angled solar panels plugged into a nearby outlet. Unlike the highly technical and expensive hurdles required to install a large rooftop solar system, the setup on Andrew Leon and Victoria Mauro’s lawn is small, portable, and cheap. The unit generates enough electricity to run…

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Trump’s former defense secretary sees no end in sight for Iran war — to the benefit of China

Trump’s former defense secretary sees no end in sight for Iran war — to the benefit of China

CNBC reports: The U.S.-Iran war could drag on for years, putting America at risk of overlooking China’s rise to power, according to President Donald Trump’s former defense secretary. During a panel discussion at LSEG and Eurasia Group’s GZERO Summit in London, Mark Esper said on Thursday he saw the conflict continuing “well into 2027,” with a possibility that it could be handed to the next U.S. administration in three years’ time. “At some point, we will reach a point where…

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Oil prices jump as Iran steps up tanker attacks, hurricane threatens U.S. Gulf production

Oil prices jump as Iran steps up tanker attacks, hurricane threatens U.S. Gulf production

CNBC reports: Crude oil prices rose sharply Thursday, as Iran ramped up its attacks on tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz and Hurricane Isaias threatened U.S. offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, gained 4% to close at $104.28 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures advanced 3.6% to settle at $91.49 per barrel. Nine tankers have come under attack in and around Hormuz over the past week, jeopardizing the recent recovery in crude…

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Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war, sources say

Attacks on tankers in Hormuz hit highest of any week since start of Iran war, sources say

Reuters reports: Attacks on tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz hit their highest last week of any week since the ​Iran war began, according to maritime security sources tracking incidents, amid ‌a bigger export push by Gulf producers. Attacks, attempted attacks and harassment activity including drone overflights, surveillance and hailing using VHF radio by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have persisted ​in the strait, the US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said ​in a note on Sunday. “These actions continue…

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Oil jumps 4% on reports China halts fuel exports, 10,000 more U.S. troops head to Middle East

Oil jumps 4% on reports China halts fuel exports, 10,000 more U.S. troops head to Middle East

Reuters reports: Oil prices ‌jumped on Thursday and settled up more than $4 a barrel, after a report said the US was sending more troops and carriers to the Middle East and China suspended oil products exports, stoking fears that global fuel shortages could worsen. The new front-month December Brent crude futures contract settled at $102.31 a barrel, up 4.37% or $4.28. US West Texas Intermediate crude futures finished at $92.87 a barrel, up 2.71%, or $2.45. A Wall Street…

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Soaring diesel prices are clobbering Trump’s MAGA faithful, exposing rifts

Soaring diesel prices are clobbering Trump’s MAGA faithful, exposing rifts

The Washington Post reports: The administration has long since exhausted the tools available for mitigating the damage to consumers [caused by high fuel prices]. It paused the century-old Jones Act that limits what vessels can ship fuel between U.S. ports. It has spent heavily on a military operation to protect ships seeking to traverse the Strait of Hormuz from attack, which has helped restart the flow of some fuel through the waterway. It has urged Ukraine to stop the attacks…

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The truth behind Trump’s ‘biggest oil deal in world history’

The truth behind Trump’s ‘biggest oil deal in world history’

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump has long coveted the oilfields of other nations and declared an agreement with Venezuela to be “the biggest oil deal in world history”. But the agreement, reached after the US seized Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, is almost certainly doomed to collapse amid a wide array of legal and logistical issues, a Guardian investigation has found. The US president first mused about taking oil from Iran in 1987, when he told ABC’s Barbara Walters that Iranian…

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Climate super-pollutant from China’s electric grid is cooking the planet

Climate super-pollutant from China’s electric grid is cooking the planet

Inside Climate News reports: China’s electric grid has a dirty secret: Despite leading the world in renewable energy expansion, it is also the largest emitter of the planet’s most potent greenhouse gas. Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a synthetic chemical that plays a critical role as an electrical insulator in high-voltage equipment. The gas is odorless, invisible, non-toxic and non-flammable. But it is also a climate killer, 24,300 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide on a pound-for-pound…

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likens AI to surgery: ‘in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first’

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likens AI to surgery: ‘in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first’

The Verge reports: As Jensen Huang puts it, AI can help fight climate change — but only if it inflicts “an enormous amount of pain and suffering” first. The Nvidia CEO discussed the future of energy and AI’s impact on our planet in the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show. But his comments boil down to the same accelerationist spin we’ve seen from a variety of tech leaders as well as President Donald Trump. They promise that AI will…

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Can the energy giants be held responsible for extreme weather?

Can the energy giants be held responsible for extreme weather?

Ross Andersen writes: In late June 2021, the ghost of summertime future visited the Pacific Northwest. For three days, a heat dome hovered over Multnomah County, Oregon, broiling Portland’s drizzly landscape of evergreens and ferns with temperatures of 116 degrees Fahrenheit—much hotter than any resident, even the centenarians, had ever experienced there. Along the rocky ocean shore, sea stars and clams cooked alive in the tide pools. The heat buckled highway lanes and melted the cables that route power to…

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China presses Iran to help rein in Houthis after Saudi appeal, sources say

China presses Iran to help rein in Houthis after Saudi appeal, sources say

Reuters reports: China has privately asked Tehran to help rein in Yemen’s Houthis after an appeal to Beijing by Saudi Arabia following the Iran-backed group’s military blitz in the past week, according to three Iranian sources familiar with ​the matter. Riyadh turned to China for help after the Houthis made rapid advances along the Red Sea coast and around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, moves that have left Saudi oil exports and ‌shipping more exposed, the sources said. China has publicly…

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Follow the money: Democrats demand to know where Venezuelan oil revenue is going

Follow the money: Democrats demand to know where Venezuelan oil revenue is going

The Washington Post reports: Three Democratic senators are pressing the Trump administration for transparency on billions of dollars in oil revenue from Venezuela believed to be in a U.S. government-controlled account. In a letter obtained by The Washington Post, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) are asking Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for information about the status and use of this revenue, which is being disbursed from an account…

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Saudi pipeline outage threatens loss of 4% of global oil supply

Saudi pipeline outage threatens loss of 4% of global oil supply

Reuters reports: Saudi Arabia will run out of oil stocks for exports ‌if it doesn’t restart its major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to a loss of up to 4% of global supply, Saudi oil buyers and traders said. A further decline in Saudi flows will worsen the global supply crunch, which has already pushed global fuel prices to record highs, spurred ​inflation around the world and sent U.S. bond yields to the highest levels since the…

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As hostilities flare and oil prices spike, U.S. consumers pay at the pump

As hostilities flare and oil prices spike, U.S. consumers pay at the pump

By Marianne Lavelle September 8, 2026 This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. Hours after President Donald Trump predicted on Truth Social that oil prices would fall precipitously once the United States wins its war with Iran, strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure by Iranian-backed Houthis Tuesday caused global oil prices to spike to nearly $100 per barrel. The latest runup,…

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Houthis’ lightning advance down Red Sea coast is ‘a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions’

Houthis’ lightning advance down Red Sea coast is ‘a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions’

CNN reports: The desperate pleas for air cover from Yemeni generals started coming mid-morning on Thursday. An advance by the Iran-backed Houthis toward Yemen’s strategic port city of Mocha was in full swing, and backup support from chief ally Saudi Arabia was nowhere in sight. “The Houthis committed everything they had – waves upon waves of fighters … along with their available ballistic missiles and weapons,” a senior Yemeni source attached to their military forces told CNN. The source said…

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Saudi Arabia has few options as it faces mounting threats from Iran and its allies

Saudi Arabia has few options as it faces mounting threats from Iran and its allies

The Associated Press reports: A lightning advance by Houthi rebels threatens a crucial Red Sea shipping route. Drone attacks blamed on Iraqi militias have forced the closure of a major pipeline, and Iran is still disrupting the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a nightmare scenario for Saudi Arabia, and it has sent jitters through global markets. The Saudis’ most essential ally, the United States, has been unpredictable and sometimes unreliable. U.S. President Donald Trump seems reluctant to widen an already unpopular…

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