Local Climate News
Jeff Heie, the founder and director of the local nonprofit GiveSolar, received a Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions 2025 Sustainability Champions Award. GiveSolar raises funds for solar installations on Habitat for Humanity houses across the country.
“The Elephant in the Room” Art Exhibition: Paintings exploring climate crisis and migration by local artist Charlotte Shristi. Arts Council of the Valley Smith House Galleries, 311 South Main St., Harrisonburg, VA.
- Thursday, July 3 – Exhibition Opening Reception, 5-7 pm, Artist will not be in attendance
- Saturday, July 12 – Second Saturday, Meet the artist, 10 am-2 pm
- July 3-25, open weekdays 11 am -4 pm
Wayne Teel, a recently retired professor of agroecology and sustainability at James Madison University, wrote a Substack article, “The Problem is the Car,” which lays out the embedded costs in our car culture and how this a major factor in the challenge to effectively address climate change.
Virginia Energy News
The Virginia Breeze bus route between Roanoke and Washington DC, with stops locally in Staunton and Harrisonburg, has had a 25% increase in riders in the past year. In March, it logged its highest ridership ever. It is a fast, cheap and convenient option to travel to DC.
The Democratic primary for Virginia’s attorney general became a “proxy fight” between Dominion Energy and Clean Virginia as they funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the two candidates. Clean Virginia won this round as Jay Jones, who they backed, won the race.
Residents of rural Pittsylvania County, Virginia, successfully fought a developer’s efforts to build a 3,500 MW gas-fired power plant and 84 warehouse-sized data centers.
The Clean Economy Act mandates a carbon-free electric grid in Virginia by 2050. Republicans never liked the bill, but now even some Democrats are saying it should be tweaked. What is driving this discussion is the huge energy demands of data centers in the state.
Our Climate Crisis
June is the new July. Intense summer heat is arriving earlier across Canada, the U.S. and northern Europe. Between 1979 and 2000, the average Northern Hemisphere temperature would break the 69.8 degrees F threshold around July 10 and continue for about five weeks. Last year, the average temperature held above 69.8 degrees F from June 13 until Sept. 5.
A group of scientists has demonstrated that if the world stays on course to warm up to 1.5 degrees—or even stays at its current level of 1.2 degrees above preindustrial levels—polar ice sheets will probably continue to quickly melt, causing seas to rise and displacing coastal communities.
After a year of catastrophic flooding, flood-prone Vermont towns are weighing economic survival against climate-driven home buyouts.
Politics and Policy
A U.S. Senate committee advanced a version of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that retains a phase-out of solar and wind energy tax credits by 2028. It would eliminate consumer tax credits for solar panels, electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, and induction stoves. It also imposes a new tax on existing wind and solar farms if they include materials from a foreign entity like China—a huge blow for the renewables industry.
A wave of state bills pushed by fossil fuel interests aims to label methane gas as “clean” energy, undermining climate policies and misleading the public.
The U.S. EPA proposed repealing rules that limit pollutants and carbon emissions from coal and gas plants across the country, claiming that they “do not contribute significantly” to “dangerous” air pollution. They’re actually the second-largest source of carbon emissions in the country, and they’re responsible for a lot of health-harming pollutants.
Trump and Republicans’ massive “Big Beautiful Bill,” as written, would force the U.S. Postal Service to sell off its EV fleet and undo billions of dollars in EV investments. The Senate parliamentarian, fortunately, ruled against this provision in the bill.
Investments in EV battery plants in the U.S. may be stranded as EV sales slow and Republicans take aim at tax credits. At the same time, China has enough manufacturing to meet the entire world’s demand for batteries and may be looking to off-load them onto other markets.
The U.S. government skipped a major round of United Nations climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, in June, leaving other nations and U.S. civil society groups to navigate the talks without them. This is the first time that the U.S. government has been absent.
UK officials sat down with Chinese counterparts in June to discuss the next steps of climate cooperation between the two countries.
Energy
The world’s largest banks boosted the amount of financing given to fossil fuel companies last year in keeping with their fraying, environmental commitments. Four of the five largest fossil fuel financiers last year were American banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
The billion-dollar U.S. green hydrogen boom ended before it ever began. The emerging industry was struggling because of soaring costs and low demand even before Trump and fellow Republicans began pulling the financial rug out from under it.
Hyundai announced plans to build a $6 billion hydrogen-integrated steel mill in Louisiana. It will begin by using blue hydrogen created from natural gas and eventually transition to green hydrogen. It is expected to drive jobs, emissions cuts, and clean energy adoption.
Fervo Energy, a geothermal energy company, has drilled 15,765 feet into the earth and is projected to hit a bottomhole temperature of 520 °F. This is a big step in the further development of geothermal energy as a clean and renewable energy source.
U.S. ethanol has been largely a failure. Roughly a third of corn and soybeans grown in the U.S are now grown to produce ethanol despite accounting for only 6% of our country’s transportation fuel. Furthermore, ethanol produces more greenhouse gases than the fossil fuels it replaces.
In a turning point in the clean energy transition, batteries have now hit the price point that lets solar power deliver affordable electricity almost every hour of the year in the sunniest parts of the world. It lets solar carry much more of the load and helps avoid costly grid expansions.
The risk of rising oil prices has grown amidst military action in the Middle East. This has heightened EVs’ advantages as lower fuel and operating costs are lifting sales—particularly in emerging economies that are reducing their reliance on those costly oil imports.
LG is opening a massive Michigan factory to make lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for the grid. The $1.4 billion investment onshores production of a popular battery chemistry that had been almost exclusively made in China, amid tariff and tax policy uncertainty.
Food and Agriculture
Small-scale farms in Vermont are part of a broader movement resisting industrialized agriculture by focusing on local food systems that prioritize soil health, economic resilience, and community relationships.
A surge in dust storms across California’s Central Valley is linked to expanding tracts of fallowed farmland, as growers abandon irrigation to conserve water. Dust from the fallowed fields has wide-reaching consequences including respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease.
Dried-up and fallow California farmland in Fresno County is set to become the site of the largest world-record solar facility combined with battery storage.
Bee populations, vital to pollinating our food crops, are collapsing in the U.S. under the stresses of the widespread use of pesticides, habitat loss, and rising temperatures. The top federal lab on native bees is now set to close under President Trump’s proposed “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Earth’s most productive farmlands, including those in the U.S. Midwest, are likely to face sharp declines in food output due to climate change. It is already disrupting harvests through extreme weather, and while farmers are adapting, these efforts are unlikely to fully offset the damage.
Climate Justice
Wind turbines kill fewer birds than cats or windows, but they still pose a serious threat to vulnerable species like raptors and migratory seabirds. Climate change also poses a threat to birds. Scientists are researching bird behavior near turbines and devising and testing new technologies to keep birds safe.
A year of flooding exacerbated by climate change, poisoned waterways from illegal mining, and rising violence has deepened poverty and food insecurity for rural Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities in the Salaquí River basin in Colombia.
A rush to mine nickel in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, driven by the electric vehicle boom, has damaged one of the world’s richest marine ecosystems—harming farming and fishing livelihoods—despite recent government action to curb operations.
Thousands of Navajo and Hopi residents who relied on federal grants for safer, cleaner home heating now face uncertainty after the Trump administration terminated key environmental justice funding. Many families on the reservations rely on outdated coal- and wood-burning stoves, which contribute to high rates of respiratory illness and unsafe indoor air.
Climate Action
Mark Zuckerberg was hit with a backlash after pulling into a remote port in Norway with his $300 million superyacht. Locals blew whistles and staged a demonstration, calling out what they saw as a jarring example of climate hypocrisy.
AI is straining power grids and producing harmful emissions. Being thoughtful about when and how you use chatbots such as ChatGPT can help. A Google search takes about 10 times less energy. You can avoid prompting Google’s default AI-generated summaries by switching over to the “web” search tab, which is one of the options alongside images and news.
The Inter-American Development Bank plans to boost climate finance by having development banks purchase performing renewable energy loans in developing countries, freeing up capital for new projects. These loans, though relatively low-risk, often sit idle because credit rules prevent private institutions like pension funds from investing in them.
Vienna, Austria, is a model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change. About half of Vienna’s 2 million residents live in affordable social housing. The city is using energy efficiency upgrades in its housing stock as one way to get its climate pollution down to zero by 2040.
Mitsubishi will make an estimated $3.9 billion investment in community solar energy development in the U.S. It will invest in Boston-based community solar developer Nexamp and in distributed community scale solar projects for Walmart in 31 solar projects across five states.
Earl Zimmerman is a member of the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley Steering Committee.
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