This edition explores nuclear’s resurgence, clean tech growth, EV innovations, and more!

GRIDLOCKED, BUT GAINING GROUND: Global clean energy investment faces its share of headwinds these days: Geopolitical tensions, tariff and supply chain turmoil, policy whiplash in Washington. And so when the International Energy Agency’s report, “World Energy Investment 2025,” came across our desk, it was heartening to learn that a record $2.2 trillion is headed this year to clean technologies, “twice as much as the $1.1 trillion going to oil, natural gas, and coal.” The clean tech basket includes renewables, nuclear, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency, and electrification. Headlined by $450 billion going into solar, the shift reflects a global trend that has gathered steam post-Covid, as China moves to consolidate its clean tech dominance, U.S. companies race to catch up, and Europe seeks alternatives to Russian gas.

The caveat, amid rocketing global demand for electricity, is that this shift is being spurred less by climate concerns than by the drive for grid stability and energy security. As a result, spending on fossil fuels has stubbornly plateaued. Case in point: In 2024, after years of drought killed much of its hydropower, China greenlit nearly 100 GW of new coal-fired plants, “largely for electricity security reasons.” And while total clean tech investment has jumped by 70 percent over the last five years, it has far to go to meet the 2030 targets set at COP28 in Dubai: to triple capacity for installed renewable electricity generation “to at least 11,000 GW,” and to double global gains in average energy efficiency to more than four percent each year.

BOTTOM LINE: With government incentives and R&D in flux, it’s even more critical for private sector financing to raise its ambition in line with Speed & Scale’s Objective 10.0.

OKRs in the News

🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• DOE Forfeits Clean Energy Funding: The U.S. Department of Energy is canceling $3.7 billion in funding for clean energy projects. The cuts include $331 million to Exxon Mobil to convert a Texas plant from natural gas to clean hydrogen, and $500 million to Heidelberg Materials AG for low-carbon cement (Bloomberg).

• Clean Car Policy Clash: Senate Republicans voted 51 to 44 to overturn California’s clean vehicle emissions waiver, sidestepping the Senate parliamentarian and a U.S. Government Accountability Office ruling that the waiver for this issue couldn’t be repealed under the Congressional Review Act. The move, which Democrats call a dangerous precedent for both curbing emissions standards and Senate procedure, targets rules aimed at phasing out gas cars by 2035 (Politico).

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Resilient Rice: India has approved its first genome-edited, climate-resilient rice varieties. Both Pusa Rice DST1 and DRR Dhan 10 offer improved yields and stress tolerance. The two varieties will now enter large-scale cultivation trials, marking a significant step in crop innovation for the Global South as climate impacts intensify (Nature).

• Food Waste, To Go: Journalist Isobel Lewis takes a deep dive into the food waste app Too Good To Go, which enables consumers to buy surplus food from restaurants at a discount. Highlighting the app’s growing popularity (especially on TikTok), Lewis finds that it helps businesses responsibly offload excess food while positioning it as a savvy, eco-friendly way to save money (Independent).

OKR Highlight

Tropical primary forest loss nearly doubled between 2023 and 2024, to more than 16 million acres, according to the World Resource Institute’s Global Forest Watch.

This new data puts us further behind the target set by Speed & Scale’s Key Result 4.1, which calls for the world to plant or restore at least as many trees as we log or burn by 2030. At present, 18 soccer fields of forest are being lost each minute.

WRI’s stark warning should be a wake-up call to the more than 140 nations that have pledged to end deforestation by 2030. Brazil, which will host the United Nations’ COP30 this November, accounted for 42 percent of global forest loss, more than any other country.

The mushrooming scale of this crisis highlights the rising environmental risk from climate change feedback loops. Fueled by record global temperatures, forest fires surpassed agriculture as the leading cause of deforestation last year.

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• May Meets the Heat: South and Central Texas experienced one of the most intense May heat waves on record. On May 12, Austin reached 105 degrees, an all-time record there for May and about 20 degrees warmer than the normal high. On May 13, Corpus Christi soared to 110 degrees, an all-time record for any day. This unprecedented heat led the state’s energy demand to skyrocket to more than 78,000 MW, breaking last year’s May record. Scientists say that hotter, more frequent, and longer lasting heat waves are the result of climate change (New York Times).

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

• Cementing a Clean Future: In a significant step toward decarbonizing its footprint, Microsoft agreed to purchase over 600,000 tons of low-carbon cement from Sublime Systems. Cement accounts for 8 percent of global CO2 emissions (ESG Today).

• Hot Metal, Low Emissions: Despite a four percent rise in total emissions in 2024, China’s steel industry is pushing toward cleaner operations. By the end of this year, 80 percent of the country’s steel production capacity is expected to complete ultra-low-emission upgrades, in line with new specifications by China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. While blast furnaces continue to weigh on progress, the recent inclusion of steel–along with cement and aluminum–in China’s carbon trading market signal a tightening grip on heavy industry emissions. (GMK Center).

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• Rock Solid Removal: Mati Carbon, a St. Louis-based startup, just won the $50 million global XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition for its enhanced rock weathering. The company’s solution removes CO2 by spreading basalt dust on farmland. In India, the method has boosted rice yields by 20 percent while locking away carbon for millennia (St. Louis Magazine).

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

• A Pricey Solution for Taiwan: After shutting its last nuclear reactor, Taiwan’s CPC Corp. is turning to liquefied natural gas cargoes. With nuclear offline, Taiwan’s LNG imports hit a record for its 30-day moving average, and are exposing its semiconductor-driven economy to global gas price volatility (Bloomberg).

• Charging Ahead Without China: In a move to challenge Chinese supply chain dominance in rare earths, the tech-critical metals for EVs and military technologies, a Canadian company is opening a mine in Brazil to supply a processing plant it will build in the U.S. Brazil, home to over 20 percent of global rare earths reserves, is seeing more than $600 million in new investment (Wall Street Journal).

• Fission at Full Speed: President Trump signed four executive orders to supercharge U.S. nuclear energy by speeding the testing of reactors, cutting regulations to build reactors on federal land, and expediting applications and reviews. The goal is quadruple nuclear energy capacity to 400 GW by 2050, much of it with small modular nuclear reactors (CNN).

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

• Fine Print on Fine Particles: In Louisiana’s heavily polluted “Cancer Alley,” community groups are suing over a new law that bans the use of low-cost air sensor data to support their push to demand cleaner air. The law blocks residents from acting on fine particulate matter pollution, also known as PM 2.5, unless they can afford the $60,000 monitors that meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s new standards (New York Times).

• Charging Toward Net Zero: Battery giant CATL, whose supply chain accounts for 95 percent of its 118 million tons of 2024 emissions, will reward vendors that cut carbon. Aiming for full supply chain carbon neutrality by 2035, CATL is offering incentives and technical support to suppliers as it works to decarbonize EV battery production at scale (Bloomberg).

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

• Watt a Breakthrough: A breakthrough silicon battery anode developed by Korean researchers could extend EV driving range tenfold, to more than 3,000 miles, by safely unlocking far more energy density than traditional graphite. The innovation marks a major leap for electrified transport and renewable storage, bringing a zero-emissions future closer to reality (The Brighter Side).

• Baltic’s Green Spark: Lithuania is launching its first green hydrogen project, a $13 million electrolyser at Klaipeda Port. By 2030, the electrolyser’s capacity is projected to reach 1.3GW. The project aligns with looming EU mandates and signals early momentum in decarbonizing maritime and industrial sectors (Hydrogen Insight).

💰 10.0 – Invest!

• Investors Doubling Down on Climate: Seventy percent of major asset owners, with over $2 trillion under management, are now integrating responsible investment goals. From New York City to Oregon to Ontario, leaders are linking climate action to their fiduciary duty. In a period of policy uncertainty, they are raising the bar for asset managers (Forbes).

• Clean Energy Tax Credits Rollback?: Despite record growth in clean energy, with $145 billion in new projects since 2022, federal and state rollbacks threaten to gut critical tax credits even as electricity demand surges. With Congressional Republicans targeting IRA incentives and clean tech industry countervailing efforts to limit rollbacks, uncertainty in the U.S. renewables market deepens (Wall Street Journal).

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