As summer heats up, so does pressure on the U.S. power grid. This issue explores what’s driving record-breaking electricity demand, why clean energy storage may be the key to keeping the lights on, and how climate and energy solutions are gaining momentum across sectors and around the globe.

SUMMER SURGE: Summer is upon us and the U.S. power grid is under unprecedented stress, with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warning of heightened blackout risks across the Upper Midwest, Texas, New England, and parts of the Southeast. The main driver is a projected 10-gigawatt (GW) surge in electricity demand, double the rate of increase between the summers of 2023 and 2024. Beyond heavier use of air conditioning in homes and businesses, we’re seeing a proliferation of energy-intensive manufacturing plants and hungry data centers.

In addressing this problem, utilities seeking to add capacity face bottlenecks in bringing new plants online or upgrading existing power lines and transformers. Progress has been slowed by long permitting timelines, global supply chain snags, and a shortage of skilled technicians.

What will it take to bridge the gap between supply and demand with clean energy as an integral part of the mix? How can we bring 10 gigawatts of power online–the equivalent of what we’d need to keep the lights on in as many as 10 million homes? (Washington Post). The answer varies by region, but it’s clear that the United States urgently needs to continue to innovate on long-duration energy storage solutions to address regional shortfalls. Per the report, the recent influx of battery energy storage systems (BESS) across Texas and the U.S. West “has markedly improved the ability to manage energy risks during challenging summer periods.”  These systems bring security, stability, and resilience to the grid while also cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Meeting the moment, the American Clean Power Association this week announced a commitment to invest $100 billion by 2030 to expand the U.S. battery energy storage industry–and create 350,000 jobs.

OKRs in the News

🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• Suburbia’s Transit Triumph: In defiance of transit orthodoxy, the suburban city of Brampton, Ontario, has stimulated demand with high-frequency service, including core bus routes that run as often as every five minutes. The result: a 288 percent boost in ridership, with more daily riders than cities three times its size (Bloomberg).

• $AF Needs More Bucks: To meet 2030 climate targets and scale sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) more than threefold, the industry will need up to $45 billion in capital expenditures. A new World Economic Forum report maps 10 levers, from long-term offtakes to green bonds, that could help SAF projects overcome policy, feedstock, and financing hurdles (World Economic Forum).

• Denmark’s Green Fuel First: Denmark has launched the world’s first commercial-scale e-methanol plant to fuel low-emission shipping and industrial plastics. With renewables and recycled CO₂ powering the production of 42,000 tonnes of e-methanol per year, the facility will boost the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sections by supplying Maersk’s dual-fuel fleet and partners Novo Nordisk and Lego (Reuters).

OKR Highlight

According to the new Landscape of Climate Finance for Agrifood Systems 2025, only 7 percent of global climate finance—$95 billion annually—goes to agrifood systems, even though the sector contributes nearly 30 percent of global emissions and supports over a third of the world’s workforce. This sum falls dramatically short of the $1.1 trillion needed annually by 2030 to align with net-zero pathways. While finance for sustainable agrifood systems has grown significantly since 2019, most of the growth is concentrated in China and the EU. Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America remain severely underserved.

The report calls for a strategic overhaul: more equity for innovation, more grants for adaptation, and a greater use of guarantees and insurance to unlock private capital. To achieve OKR 3.0 and build a resilient, low-emissions food system, we must redirect finance from low-impact to high-leverage agrifood interventions.

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Farming Up, Not Out: As billion-dollar vertical farming ventures falter, a second wave of smaller, modular indoor farms is taking root in empty office buildings and food deserts, producing 10x more food with up to 98 percent less water. From Phoenix to Maine, these hyperlocal farms are reclaiming underused space, creating jobs, and offering a scalable, climate-resilient model for food security (Washington Post).

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• Forests Under the Radar: A newly launched European satellite is using P-band radar—a long wavelength signal that can penetrate forest canopies—to map the biomass of Earth’s forests for the first time. The mission aims to provide credible, consistent data to shape global climate policy and conservation funding by tracking the amount of carbon stored by forests and the impact of deforestation and climate stress (Washington Post).

• Disaster Data, Discontinued: In the face of a record $182 billion in weather-related damages last year, NOAA will stop updating its public database of billion-dollar climate disasters, cutting off a critical tool for insurers, policymakers, and communities that face escalating risks. Critics warn that the move erases vital data just as climate-driven costs surge (Bloomberg).

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

• Resale Reigns: Inflation, tariffs, and shifting values are fueling a boom in secondhand shopping. Resale shops are seeing record sales, while platforms like ThredUp are reporting a 95 percent spike in new sign-ups. As resale sheds its stigma and broadens its appeal to budget-conscious and sustainability-minded shoppers alike, we may be entering a golden age of thrifting (Wall Street Journal).

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• DAC’s Deep Rut: Venture capital funding for U.S.-based direct air capture (DAC) startups fell by 60 percent year-over-year, falling to $58 million in the first three months of 2025. Meanwhile, U.S. venture funding for the climate tech sector overall increased by 65 percent over the same period. As the federal government points toward potential rollbacks of DAC incentives, and companies walk back their climate targets and purchases of carbon removal credits, the industry will need additional support to begin to approach the removal of billions of tons of CO2 annually (Bloomberg).

• DAC Cuts, Red State Losses: President Trump’s budget called on Congress to remove over $15 billion in clean energy transition funds. This includes Project Cypress, a billion-dollar initiative to build direct air capture (DAC) facilities projected to pull one million tons of CO2 annually from the atmosphere. Located in the district of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), this project is one of many that benefit Republican-led states (E&E News).

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

• Don’t Give Up the Ghost: Tom Ellison, deputy director of the Center for Climate and Security, urges world leaders and companies to resist climate fatalism, a focus on policies that promote climate resilience and adaptation at the expense of reducing emissions. Affirming that every tenth of a degree counts, Ellison calls on state and local authorities, NGOs, and other countries beyond the U.S. to help ensure U.S. and global geopolitical security amid the climate crisis (Just Security).

• Mining the Final Frontier: In an attempt to reduce U.S. reliance on China, President Trump authorized seabed mining for critical minerals. Trump’s executive order could play a big role in helping clean energy industries meet the growing global demand for minerals, which is expected to quadruple by 2040. But the move has also sparked outrage from nations that say the U.S. has no authority to mine waters beyond its jurisdiction, as well as from environmentalists concerned about mining’s impact on the ocean’s ecosystem (The Atlantic).

• Erasing Inconvenient Truths: The Trump administration has issued significant rollbacks to federal oversight of climate impacts. First, it dismissed federal workers behind the National Climate Assessment, a report on how global warming is affecting the country. Then it ordered federal agencies to stop factoring in the social cost of carbon, a metric that estimates economic damage from global warming. Insufficient oversight on climate change’s economic and environmental tolls could ease the administration’s way in unwinding climate regulations (New York Times).

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

• Climate Data, Restored: The U.S. Agriculture Department website will restore climate change information previously deleted when President Trump took office. The reversal followed a lawsuit filed by environmental organizations, who claimed the deleted data prevented farmers from making informed decisions while facing climate-related business risks (New York Times).

• Setting the Record Straight: Covering Climate Now co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope report that up to 89 percent of the global public wants their governments to take stronger climate action. But because of the narrative spread by politicians, the fossil fuel industry, and the media, these people don’t realize that they’re in the large majority. As a counter, dozens of newsrooms worldwide are partnering to launch a project to spotlight stories on public support for climate action (The Guardian).

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

• The Race to Harness Solar in Space: As part of a growing international push to harness solar power from space, Japan plans to transmit solar power wirelessly from orbit to Earth via satellite. Though the launch is expected to produce only one kilowatt of power down to ground antenna, and is more costly than existing energy sources, momentum is building to use space-based solar power (ZME Science).

• Hydrogen on the Rise: In a signal of the promising expansion of clean hydrogen, Hyterra confirmed a 96 percent concentration of geological hydrogen, found in mud gas samples in its Kansas well, as one of the highest levels ever seen. Researchers are also turning to mountain ranges, which store hydrogen closer to the surface (Hydrogen Insight and New Scientist).

💰 10.0 – Invest!

• Pressure From Both Sides: British banks are facing shareholder pressure to step up their net-zero commitments and increase funding for renewable energy. Thirty-one shareholders—overseeing over $1.3 trillion in assets—called on Barclays to set an explicit funding target for the sector. This mounting pressure is at odds with political opposition that argues that net-zero policies will raise costs for households (Bloomberg).

• China Takes Charge: China is capitalizing on President Trump’s recent anti-climate policies, including tariffs and cuts to international climate finance, to expand its clean energy infrastructure across Southeast Asia. Thirty percent of Chinese energy investment and construction deals in countries presently go toward green energy. As emerging economies seek to make a clean energy transition, China has become the go-to supplier of low-cost solar panels, wind turbines, and EVs (Washington Post).

For more, follow Speed & Scale on LinkedIn and X.

Share this email with a friend by forwarding it!