From the heartbreaking floods in Texas to the ripple effects of a major clean energy rollback, this month’s climate news is a sobering reminder of how fast the stakes are rising.

STANDING WITH TEXAS: It would be hard to imagine a more heartbreaking, horrific scene than the devastating July 4 floods in Central Texas. Amid an astounding 20 inches of rain, as the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes, the raging waters swept away cars, RVs, and whole houses. Ten days later, more than 130 people have been confirmed dead–including 27 young campers and staff members at Camp Mystic in the Texas Hill Country. More than 100 remain missing.

As the nation joins survivors in mourning the victims, the floods are a tragic reminder of the need to prepare and adapt for extreme weather, especially on vulnerable coastlines and floodplains. (Camp Mystic was built in an area known to meteorologists as “Flash Flood Alley.”) At the same time, the Texas calamity underscores the urgent need to cut fossil fuel emissions. It’s no coincidence that the frequency of weather disasters has risen 500 percent over the last fifty years. Warmer air holds more water. Based on a preliminary European analysis, “natural variability” alone can’t account for the torrential rainfall in Texas. The runoff was made even more violent by record drought conditions that parched the Hill Country’s thin topsoil. In short, we can’t wait to move on climate change. The dangers aren’t confined to some abstract, distant future. If we’re going to protect our loved ones, we need to act today.

OKRs in the News

🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• Quicklime at Sea: Prototypes of a new invention by London-based startup Seabound have shown it’s possible to capture at least 78 percent of the carbon and 90 percent of the sulfur released from the exhausts of cargo ships. The carbon and sulfur are funneled into a container and absorbed by thousands of cherry-sized quicklime pellets, triggering a chemical reaction that produces limestone (The Guardian).

• Electra-fying the Skies: A new hybrid-electric plane that can take flight from ultra-short runways may be deployed by 2029. To generate greater lift, the plane’s propellers blow air over the wings. Where typical small planes need 1,500 feet to get airborne, Aerospace startup Electra’s can lift off after just 150 feet of roll. The company is seeking to revolutionize aviation with planes that can take off and land on runways no longer than soccer fields (The Wall Street Journal).

💡Local progress spotlight!

Virginia has taken a bold step toward a cleaner, safer future—at least for takeout foods. As of July 1, the Commonwealth has banned Styrofoam food containers for large food vendors, with smaller businesses covered in 2026. Twelve states have now enacted polystyrene legislation, a big advance in the fight.

The Virginia law targets cups, plates, and takeout clamshells that can take up to 500 years to decompose. Less than 1 percent are recycled. Too often they end up in our waterways, harming wildlife and contributing to long-term pollution. The foam bans reflect a broader trend to encourage companies to align with a cleaner, greener future.

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Banned from the BBQ: Texas has enacted a two-year ban on the sale of lab-grown meat, citing the need to protect the state’s cattle industry and to conduct further research into cell-cultured protein. Although lab-grown meat has gained support in recent years as a more sustainable alternative to real meat, the Texas law—set to take effect in September—favors meat “raised with natural and traditional methods” (Dallas Express).

• Methane Moo-ve: New Zealand scientists discovered that adding polyferric sulfate to cow waste ponds cuts methane emissions by over 90 percent, offering a low-cost, scalable solution for small farms without access to expensive digesters. Now rolling out across 250 dairy farms, the treatment could make a big dent in agriculture’s 53 percent of the country’s overall emissions (Bloomberg).

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• Logging Off Protection: The Trump administration is moving to eliminate protections on 58 million acres of national forests and to open them to road building, logging, and development. The rollback threatens pristine ecosystems, clean water, and carbon-storing old-growth forests like Alaska’s Tongass (New York Times).

• Warming Past the Point: A new report warns that by early 2028, global carbon emissions could lock in 1.5°C of long-term warming, increasing the likelihood of dangerous climate consequences. Scientists warn that extreme weather and climate risks will continue to intensify unless governments act urgently to cut emissions and protect vulnerable communities (Associated Press).

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

• Watts in a Prompt?: Every AI query comes at an energy cost. Generating two six-second videos can burn as much electricity as cooking a steak on an electric grill, and large-scale AI projects can rack up the equivalent of thousands of kilowatt-hours of power, according to the U.S. Energy Department and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. With U.S. data centers on track to consume 12 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2028, experts are urging tech companies to boost efficiency, transparency, and use of clean energy (Wall Street Journal).

• Fast-Tracked and Mineral-Packed: The U.S. Department of the Interior is streamlining the development of offshore critical minerals, essential components of clean energy production. But the new policies—aimed at reducing permitting delays, extending leases, and accelerating environmental reviews—could have harmful consequences for protected areas, especially with an expedited review process (U.S. Department of Interior).

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• Subsidy Standoff: Despite a fierce push by Texas oil billionaire Bud Brigham and fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein to kill carbon capture incentives, Congress ultimately preserved the federal tax credit in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The fight exposed a deepening rift in the oil industry, as giants like Occidental and Continental lean into carbon removal to meet their emissions targets while smaller producers reject it as a threat to drilling and free markets (Wall Street Journal and Reuters).

• Rooted in Removal: Microsoft has signed a 10-year deal with Anew Climate and Aurora Sustainable Lands for 4.8 million nature-based carbon removal credits, the largest working forest carbon project in the eastern U.S. in two decades. The credits will come from improved forest management across five states. In line with a new forestry protocol, they’ll be monitored with satellite imagery, drones, and machine learning (Anew Climate, Aurora Sustainable Lands, and Microsoft).

OKR Highlight

On July 4, President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB).  The final version of the legislation, as passed by the House, escalates actions against clean energy, including an accelerated phase out of tax credits for solar and wind projects and the early termination of residential and EV credits.  A further setback came with Trump’s July 7 Executive Order, which tightens enforcement of the OBBB. With energy demand surging in the U.S. and costs to consumers expected to rise, clean energy industry and climate groups continue to advocate for more consistent policies to foster sustained growth in renewables. A detailed breakdown of the bill’s energy tax credit changes can be found here. Rest assured that we’ll be monitoring the OBBB’s impact over the next several months.

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

• Roadmap for Bipartisan Policies: Nathaniel Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, argues that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” offers an avenue for bipartisan climate progress. While the OBBB makes severe cuts to tax credits for EVs and solar and wind, as Keohane notes, it preserves credits for carbon capture, clean hydrogen, and advanced nuclear. Despite climate polarization in Washington, some major decarbonization projects may be able to transcend party lines and survive political headwinds (Washington Post).

• Permits, Pipelines, Power Plays: As part of a broader push by the Trump administration to accelerate approvals for pipelines, ports, and other fossil fuel infrastructure,  the Department of Energy overhauled its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) procedures. The changes eliminate references to climate change and environmental justice, narrow greenhouse gas analysis, and waive NEPA review for natural gas exports and emergency orders (U.S. Department of Energy and E&E News).

• Toll Tally Triumph: Since the onset of Manhattan’s congestion pricing in January, vehicular traffic has dropped 10 percent. Noise complaints are down 70 percent, and the policy is generating $50 million a month for public transit improvements. While many New Yorkers are surprised by the policy’s success, congestion pricing has long delivered similar results in cities like London (The Economist).

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

• Double Trouble Forecast: Scientists are sounding the alarm over a “double whammy” of extreme heat and worsening air pollution, two health hazards that amplify one another and disproportionately affect vulnerable groups. Compounding the crisis, the Trump administration is rolling back air quality protections and emissions standards, even as the frequency and severity of heat-driven smog and wildfire smoke are on the rise (New York Times).

• Rising Seas, Rising Stakes: Sea level rise is threatening to engulf the remote Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. As a result, more than one-third of its population—over 4,000 people—have applied for a new, first-of-its-kind climate visa that offers permanent residency in Australia. With just 280 annual slots available, the visa program is a stark preview of the future of climate migration (BBC).

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

• Ion the Prize: Inspired by hydrogen fuel-cell technology, Storage Systems’ new solid-state batteries could yield power cells that last 50 percent longer and charge significantly faster than conventional lithium-ion batteries. If successfully scaled, the technology could accelerate climate progress by extending EV range, reducing charging time, and making electrification practical across transportation and heavy industry (The Wall Street Journal).

• Revived and Running: Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company worth $5 billion, is launching a new business line to sell refurbished batteries. In partnership with Crusoe Energy, Redwood is repurposing nearly 800 EV batteries to connect them to a solar panel system and power the data centers that host Crusoe’s cloud service (Axios).

• Formula Electrify: Final energy use accounts for 60 percent of global energy-related emissions, making electrification essential to the clean energy transition. Upgrading transportation, industry, and buildings could cut fossil fuel reliance and replace up to 75 percent of energy imports. Yet electrification tends to be overshadowed by the race for solar and wind, even though it represents a much larger market opportunity and has a more direct impact on consumers (Ember Energy).

💰 10.0 – Invest!

• Credit or No Credit: The “One Big Beautiful Bill” drastically overhauls the clean energy tax credits established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The major changes include a complete termination of EV tax credits for automakers after 180 days. They also terminate tax credits for solar and wind after 2027 unless the projects deliver at least one gigawatt of energy, are at least partially on federal land, and have already been certified by the Bureau of Land Management. One positive item of note: a new technology-neutral tax credit for low-carbon transportation fuels (Heatmap).

• Power Playing Catch-up: The biggest bottleneck to AI progress, according to Goldman Sachs’ new AI investment report, is a shortage of energy supply. With data center power demand set to surge over 160 percent by 2030, the bank argues that addressing the shortfall will require a multifaceted energy strategy of natural gas, renewables, nuclear, and behind-the-meter generation (Goldman Sachs).

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