** Roaring wildfires burning across Canadian territories have delivered the types of poor air quality that some of the world’s largest, and most polluted, cities face on a daily basis. Smoke plumes from fires burning in the forests of eastern Canada have drifted to cities like Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia, sending them soaring to the top of the global pollution charts.
** A bipartisan group of Western senators on Wednesday introduced the Headwaters Protection Act, which seeks to keep those forests and their important water-filtering functions from going up in smoke.
** Global gas prices could fall as much as 50% year-on-year as weak demand and resilient supply force European and Asian markets for the fuel to experience the sort of downside already present in U.S. natural gas, analyst at Citigroup (NYSE:C) said in a note issued Wednesday.
** Rapid electrification is boosting power demand and straining the electric grid in New York state, as renewable resources struggle to replace fossil fuel that is being phased out, the grid operator said in a report released on Wednesday.
** The potential for a flood of US renewable projects driven by new tax incentives is at risk of “breaking” power markets by pushing electricity prices to negative levels, according to Wells Fargo.
** Arnold Schwarzenegger, known for his activism on climate change, is advocating for a fresh approach to tackle the issue. In an interview with CBS News, Schwarzenegger expressed his belief that reframing the climate crisis as pollution could have a more significant impact on rallying people to protect the planet.
** The US solar market is on track to more than double over the next five years as the landmark Inflation Reduction Act boosts domestic manufacturing. Total installed capacity will reach 377 gigawatts at the end of 2028, up from 142 gigawatts at the end of last year, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie published Thursday.
World
** The spread between Europe’s natural gas prices for this winter and next is widening, signaling near-term risks are easing but greater uncertainty ahead.
** Banish fossil fuels, capture their emissions, pull CO2 from thin air — diplomats in Bonn for UN-led climate talks agree there’s too much planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but remain at loggerheads on the best way to reduce it.
** Oil prices have come down quite a bit from their 2022 peak. While that has prompted some traders to bet against the commodity, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has issued a stern warning for the short sellers. “I keep advising them that they will be ouching — they did ouch in April,” he said at the Qatar Economic Forum in May.
** Two Chinese makers of energy storage systems and batteries are weighing investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Vietnam, industry and government sources said.
** Guilt-free air travel may be possible from 2030, after an Oxford University spin-off teamed up with United Airlines to make jet fuel from carbon dioxide. University scientists this week announced they had secured £18 million in funding from new investors including two global energy companies and United Airlines.