El Ignaciano / Marzo 2026

Environmental Wins and Loses
Antonio Sowers / Enrique Rodríguez

The US had a big battery boom last year

Despite Donald Trump’s unrelenting attacks on renewable energy, there’s a quiet revolution happening on US grids. The US had a big battery boom last year, as reported by Molly Taft in Nice News on March 3.

The US added a record-breaking amount of energy storage in 2025, according to a new solar industry report published Monday. The growth of battery storage across the US is a rare success story for clean energy during the renewables-hostile second Trump administration—and also a sign of how utilities may be thinking about reorienting electric grids as demand goes up across the country.

The new report, issued by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), follows another dataset released last week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showing a similar boom in battery growth. In 2025, according to the SEIA report, the US installed 57 gigawatt hours of new energy storage to the grid, with new installations growing almost 30 percent over the year before. (As its name suggests, a gigawatt hour is a measure of energy stored over time.) That’s enough storage, the SEIA report claims, to power more than 5 million homes each year.

The report predicts that the market could jump another 21 percent by the end of this year, increasing by an additional 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. These are monster numbers compared to less than a decade ago, when there was about half a gigawatt of storage on the grid in total.

And despite Washington’s hostility toward renewable energy, batteries—along with solar—saw significant growth in some deep red states last year. One of the big renewable energy success stories of the moment is Texas, where solar met more than 15 percent of demand throughout the summer, beating out coal for the first time. The SEIA report predicts that Texas will overtake California this year to become the US state with the most gigawatt hours of storage deployed.

A Global Surge of Interest in Electric Vehicles

The US added a record-breaking amount of energy storage in 2025, according to a new solar industry report of Monday, April 6, published in an article by Simmone Shah in TIME magazine, April 9, 2026.

The growth of battery storage across the US is a rare success story for clean energy during the renewables-hostile second Trump administration—and also a sign of how utilities may be thinking about reorienting electric grids as demand goes up across the country.

The new report, issued by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), follows another dataset released last week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showing a similar boom in battery growth. In 2025, according to the SEIA report, the US installed 57 gigawatt hours of new energy storage to the grid, with new installations growing almost 30 percent over the year before. (As its name suggests, a gigawatt hour is a measure of energy stored over time.) That’s enough storage, the SEIA report claims, to power more than 5 million homes each year.

The report predicts that the market could jump another 21 percent by the end of this year, increasing by an additional 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. These are monster numbers compared to less than a decade ago, when there was about half a gigawatt of storage on the grid in total.

Batteries have proven remarkably politically resilient. Tax credits for wind and solar were cut as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill last summer amid a large-scale attack on renewables from the administration, despite opposition from Republican lawmakers with clean-energy projects in their states. But battery tax credits were largely spared.

And despite Washington’s hostility toward renewable energy, batteries—along with solar—saw significant growth in some deep red states last year. One of the big renewable energy success stories of the moment is Texas, where solar met more than 15 percent of demand throughout the summer, beating out coal for the first time. The SEIA report predicts that Texas will overtake California this year to become the US state with the most gigawatt hours of storage deployed.

Coffee Companies Join Forces to Combat Deforestation

Peet’s fanatics now have even more reason to appreciate their morning joe. The company announced this week it’s joining with Tchibo coffee and several traders under the Coffee Canopy Partnership, a global initiative pledging to combat deforestation in coffee-growing landscapes,  as reported by NICE NEWS, April 25, 2026.

It’ll kick off with a pilot program spanning six East African countries and over 463,000 square miles of coffee landscapes, and has a goal of mapping all coffee-growing regions around the world by 2027. “[The map] serves as a shared public good,” Pablo von Waldenfels, a managing director at Tchibo, said in a news release, “enabling the entire sector — from roasters and governments to the farmers themselves — to collectively prevent deforestation, restore landscapes, and secure a sustainable future for coffee.”

U.S. Removed 45 Million Kilograms of Ocean Plastic | The Incredible Aftermath

What if one teenager’s underwater shock sparked the biggest ocean plastic cleanup in history? Discover how Boyan Slat and The Ocean Cleanup defied experts and removed over 45 million kilograms of plastic from the world’s oceans and rivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj8KD9frqQ8

Supermarket bags

ALDI, the German discount supermarket chain has introduced bags made from 100% recycled ocean plastic in its stores, which are also cheaper than plastic or paper bags. Other grocery chains, such as Trader Joe’s, Kroger and Sprouts, also offer bags made from recyclable materials; meanwhile, Publix has launched a campaign encouraging customers to reuse their bags to help reduce plastic waste. 

New gas projects linked to data center campuses create greenhouse gases 

As reported by WIRED on April 22, 2026, new gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects—which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US’s most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI—have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.

As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom.

The infrastructure on this list of large natural gas projects reviewed by WIRED is being developed to largely bypass the grid and provide power solely for data centers, a trend known as behind-the-meter power. As data center developers face long waits for connections to traditional utilities, and amid mounting public resistance to the possibility of higher energy bills, making their own power is becoming an increasingly popular option. These projects have either been announced or are under construction, with companies already submitting air permit application materials with state agencies.

Michael Thomas, the founder of clean energy research firm Cleanview, has been tracking gas permits for data centers across the country. He calls behind-the-meter power “a crazy acceleration of emissions.”

“It's almost like we thought we were on the downside of the Industrial Revolution, retiring coal and gas, and now we have a new hump where we’re going to rise,” he says. “That terrifies me in a lot of ways.”

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just hit a ‘depressing’ new record

On May 5 Adam Kovac reported the following in Scientific American:

The amount of carbon dioxide detected in the atmosphere hit a record high in April. CO₂ levels averaged about 431 parts per million (ppm) over that month, according to data collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are measured as a proportion of the total atmosphere. The numbers are presented as the number of molecules of a particular gas out of a million total molecules, or ppm.

Climate scientist Zachary Labe of Climate Central, a nonprofit that researches climate change, says the new record is “depressing” but not unexpected.

Labe explains that the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere tends to peak in April each year as decaying plants release greenhouse gases after winter. Some of that CO₂ gets reabsorbed by plants as they grow during the warmer months. But NOAA’s data show a worrying trend, with the average monthly amount of CO₂ steadily increasing.

The Mauna Loa Observatory has been directly observing atmospheric CO₂ and keeping record of its levels for the longest out of any other U.S. facility. Mauna Loa first began keeping track of the gas’s presence in the atmosphere in 1958. That year the April level of CO₂ was under 320 ppm.

The record comes as the observatory faces the risk of having its funding cut. A budget proposal on NOAA’s website for the 2027 fiscal year, which begins in October 2026, proposes cutting funding to numerous climate monitoring facilities, including Mauna Loa.

Other methods can trace carbon levels in the atmosphere further back in history. For example, climatologists can analyze small bubbles of gas trapped in ice cores to study the Earth’s atmosphere hundreds of thousands of years ago. On its website, NOAA cites analyses that show that, in pre-industrial-revolution times, atmospheric CO₂ was at 280 ppm or less. Even during interglacial periods, when Earth trended toward warmer temperatures and higher CO₂ levels, the amount of gas in the atmosphere seemed to have topped out at around 300 ppm.

Although the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere has continued to rise, there was a reduction in U.S. emissions in 2023 and 2024. That trend, however, was reversed in 2025, at least partially because of the increased electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers.

Still, Labe says there are reasons for optimism as the use of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind expands.

“Climate Shakedown” Bill

Dana Drugmand, of SIERRA magazine, reported on May 6 that Republicans in Congress Push “Climate Shakedown” Bill that permanently shields big oil from accountability.

In April 2025, following a meeting with oil company executives at the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing then–Attorney General Pam Bondi to prevent states from holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for fueling the climate crisis. The Department of Justice then promptly sued New York and Vermont, challenging their polluter pays “climate superfund” laws. It also brought highly unusual suits against Michigan and Hawai'i that sought to preemptively block them from suing oil and gas companies. Those suits have since been dismissed. 

Now, a year later, Republicans in Congress have taken Big Oil’s efforts to evade climate accountability even further by advancing a proposal that would permanently shield the industry from lawsuits and other liability measures. 

Representative Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) recently introduced federal legislation called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act, which would grant sweeping legal immunity to the fossil fuel industry over its role in driving what scientists warn has become a climate emergency. 

The bill prohibits liability against entities engaged in any segment of the fossil fuel supply chain. It would stop new climate lawsuits from being filed in federal and state courts and require all pending suits be immediately dismissed. Under the law, if enacted, polluter pays laws—which the bill refers to as “energy penalty laws”—would be overturned. 

Additionally, it asserts that the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is “governed exclusively by federal law.”

The bill is part of an escalating campaign that Big Oil and its political allies are waging to block any effort to hold the industry accountable as the climate crisis intensifies. Dozens of communities and states across the country have filed climate-related lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, and some are getting closer to trial. Meanwhile, a handful of states are considering adopting climate Superfund laws like the ones enacted in Vermont and New York. A few states are also considering bills that aim to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the climate-change-driven crisis in the homeowners’ insurance market. And legal experts have even floated the idea of pursuing criminal charges like homicide against the industry for deadly extreme weather events intensified by climate change. 

Where Have All the Bees Gone?

On May 7, 2026, SIERRA magazine reported about “the mystery surrounding a mass die-off frustrates beekeepers and the bee industry,” by Natasha Gilbert.

As the weather began to cool toward the end of 2024, Bret Adee, a beekeeper in South Dakota, discovered that his typically busy hives were no longer bustling. He was preparing to send them to California, where his bees help to pollinate almond groves. However, he was shocked to find that nearly three-quarters of his bees were gone. 

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “You feel like you've thrown your own life away.”

Adee is one of hundreds of beekeepers in the United States who lost over 60 percent of their colonies in late 2024 and early 2025. It was the nation’s worst-ever mass honeybee die-off and the second major population crash in the past two decades. The first took place in 2006–07.

Scientists from the US Department of Agriculture scrambled to find out what went wrong. Last June, the agency declared it had solved the mystery. Colonies had succumbed to viruses that were spread by the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. The harmful viruses included two strains of deformed wing virus that stunt and tatter bees’ wings and shorten their lifespan.

But Sierra has learned from university researchers that the hives were also exposed to a cocktail of agricultural pesticides that may have played an important role in weakening bee health. The USDA has not yet published the pesticide data.

The results from the pesticide residue tests were completed several months ago but have yet to be published. But Sierra has learned that the results show that hives were broadly contaminated with a cocktail of pesticides.

Top of Form

Research shows that pesticides at levels considered low risk combined with other problems, such as poor nutrition, can interact to harm bee survival.

Bee-friendly changes to the US industrial agricultural system, such as curbing pesticide use or protecting foraging habitat, will likely be difficult to push through, said Coy. But for the industry, he said, “it’s easy to blame beekeepers.”

Typography is the art and technique

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing (leading), letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space within letters pairs (kerning).

La energía renovable acaba de romper una racha de 100 años

El siglo del carbón a la cabeza de la matriz energética mundial ha terminado

Bryan Walsh, de larga trayectoria profesional en temas del clima, redactor y editor especializado en clima, y autor de un libro sobre el riesgo existencial, escribió al celebrarse recientemente el Dia de la Tierra:

Durante más de un siglo, el mundo ha funcionado gracias al carbón.

Cuando la central eléctrica de Thomas Edison en Pearl Street, en el Bajo Manhattan, se puso en marcha en 1882, funcionaba con carbón. El carbón sobrevivió la era del petróleo, a la era nuclear, a la carreta por el gas natural y a décadas de políticas climáticas cambiantes. Desde la década de 1970 hasta mediados de la década de 2010, el carbón suministro entre el 35 y 40 % de la electricidad del planeta, una presencia constante, aunque humeante, que impulsó la vida moderna.

El año pasado, perdió el liderazgo. El informe Global de Electricidad 2026 de Ember, publicado recientemente con motivo del Dia de la Tierra, las fuentes renovables generaron el 33,8 % de la electricidad mundial el año pasado, frente al 33% de carbón. Por primera vez que las dos cifras se cruzaban desde 1919, cuando la red eléctrica mundial aún era lo suficientemente pequeña como para funcionar principalmente con energía hidroeléctrica.

Si bien el mundo quema una enorme cantidad de carbón - unos 8,800 millones de toneladas en 2024, según la Agencia Internacional de (AIE)-, la energía solar por si sola cubrió el 75 % del aumento de la demanda mundial de electricidad. Si se combinan la energía eólica y la solar, se cubre el 99%. La generación de energía a partir de combustibles fósiles – carbón, petróleo y gas combinados – disminuyo un 0.2% en 2025. El primer descenso desde la pandemia y apenas el quinto año de este siglo en que la generación de energía fósil no aumentó.

Las fuentes de energía limpia están creciendo lo suficientemente rápido, por si solas, como absorber prácticamente todo lo que el mundo está incorporando a su red eléctrica. Y hay bastantes probabilidades de que, gracias en parte a lo que está sucediendo actualmente en Oriente Medio, esa transición se acelere.

Los precios de los módulos solares han caído aproximadamente un 75% cada década durante más de 40 años, un patrón tan persistente que tiene su propio nombre: la ley de Swanson, que establece que el precio tiende a bajar un 20% cada vez que se duplica el número total de paneles solares fabricados. A finales de 2025, un panel costaba alrededor de dólar por vatio. Ninguna otra fuente de energía importante en la historia moderna se ha abaratado tanto y tan rápido. 

En los Estados Unidos. La ley “One Big Beautiful Bill” de la administración Trump eliminó el crédito fiscal para energía solar residencial en diciembre y endureció los requisitos para proyectos comerciales. Rhodium grupo, un instituto de investigación, prevé que la ley reducirá a menos de la mitad la capacidad de energía limpia que se instale en Estados Unidos hasta 2035. Estados Unidos corre el peligro de quedarse atrás.

“How do we get to a world without fossil fuels?”

“That, in a nutshell, was the core question representatives for 57 nations gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia last week for the First International Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels (the ‘Santa Marta conference’),” as reported by The Climate Reality Project on May 8, 2026.

The question couldn't be more timely. With conflict in the Middle East choking oil and gas flows and energy and commodity prices soaring, countries everywhere are looking for an escape route from fossil fuels. Santa Marta was a chance to point the way.

What made Santa Marta quietly revolutionary was that it was the first international climate and energy summit of this scale and scope to take place completely outside the umbrella of the UN COP process that has steered global climate efforts for decades.

Being outside the COP process meant that organizers – Colombia and the Netherlands – were free to only invite nations actually willing to support energy transition. Critically, it also meant that none of the petrostates or fossil fuel lobbyists that sunk efforts to get a fossil fuel transition roadmap at COP 30 last November were there to get in the way.

The result was nothing short of magical. For once at an international climate summit, everyone was talking openly about fossil fuels and the practical challenges of phasing them out. Not if we should, but how to do it quickly and fairly. All without petrostates and lobbyists throwing up roadblocks every step of the way.

This freedom also brought the freedom to rethink the actual process of negotiations.

The good vibes would matter less if the conference didn’t also deliver real world results. The good news is that Santa Marta delivered in five key areas:

1. - Consensus on fossil fuel dependence
2.- Major economies leading by example
3.- A vision of real leadership 
4.- Centering science
5.- Real roles for Indigenous communities and civil society 

With a growing consensus that war in the Middle East has transformed the global energy sector and more and more countries recognizing they can no longer depend on unreliable fossil fuels, Santa Marta showed there is a way forward.

Next year’s conference in Tuvalu will be critical for keeping the momentum going and bringing more countries inside the tent. These conferences won’t replace the COP process, with its established legal standing and near-global participation, but they can show the world that transition works and spur real action at the larger summits.

If nothing else, what Santa Marta showed is that a significant number of countries are moving beyond statements about the dangers of fossil fuels and getting to work on alternatives. That is, transition is happening. And that is reason for hope.

Indiana Communities Suffer Under Trump’s Coal Ash Rollback

On May 19, in SIERRA magazine, Nick Engelfried reports about how a rule proposed this spring threatens decades of progress cleaning up coal’s toxic byproducts.

Every weekday while she was growing up, Barb Deardorff rode the school bus past the mountain of coal ash at Northwest Indiana’s coal-fired Schahfer Generating Station.

“I’d watch the pile get taller and taller over time,” Deardorff said. “It was part of my youth.”

Except for college and a stint studying Spanish abroad, Deardorff has always lived in sight of the Schahfer plant, which is owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, or NIPSCO. Its smokestacks loom over Indiana’s rural Kankakee Township, population about 4,700.

Some days, Deardorff would see a pall of haze discoloring the sky to the west. But the most visible sign of the coal plant’s waste was the ash landfill whose perimeter the school bus traversed daily. Unbeknownst to her then, toxins from coal ash were likely already leaching into groundwater underneath NIPSCO’s property.

It took over two decades for the federal government to step in to protect communities like Deardorff’s from health threats posed by coal ash. After years of litigation by the Sierra Club and partner groups, in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the nation’s first comprehensive coal ash rule. Among its requirements was that utilities test for contamination under coal ash storage sites and make the data public. In 2018, toxins such as lead and arsenic were detected beneath many Indiana coal ash ponds—including at Schahfer.

“That got my attention,” Deardorff said. “All the homes here have private wells connected to groundwater that could become contaminated.”

The Obama-era coal ash rule mandated utilities clean up unlined ash ponds found to be leaking. Yet, the rule also had fatal weaknesses. Ponds with no leakage detected could operate as usual, while those that stopped receiving ash before 2015 were exempt.

“The 2015 rule was a step forward,” said Robyn Skuya-Boss, director of the Sierra Club's Hoosier Chapter. “But it left behind many communities.”

Correcting this took almost another decade and more Sierra Club lawsuits. Only in 2024 did the Biden administration release an updated coal ash rule closing loopholes in the original version. Then came the second Trump administration.

«Europa, sé fiel a nuestra casa común»

Jose Luis Palacios reporta en Religión Digital el 20 de mayo el llamamiento de Más de 120 organizaciones cristianas europeas reclama a la UE una transición justa y el fin de los combustibles fósiles.

Más de 120 organizaciones cristianas de 20 países europeos han hecho público el llamamiento “Europa, sé fiel a nuestra casa común“, en el que urgen a las instituciones comunitarias a recuperar el liderazgo climático y a actuar con decisión ante el agravamiento de la crisis ecológica.

El texto, que se ha presentado en el marco de la Semana Laudato si’, advierte de que la actual coyuntura energética y geopolítica está revelando “la vulnerabilidad de nuestro continente” y reclama que la Unión Europea se mantenga fiel a sus valores fundacionales de “dignidad humana y derechos fundamentales”.

El comunicado recuerda que Europa ha sido históricamente pionera en la protección de los derechos humanos y en la acción climática, desde el Protocolo de Kioto hasta el Acuerdo de París.

Sin embargo, denuncia que en los últimos años la UE está “desmantelando actualmente su propia legislación” climática, debilitando garantías sociales y ambientales y aumentando su dependencia de los combustibles fósiles.

Las entidades firmantes alertan de que el continente se enfrenta a una disyuntiva decisiva: “liderar la eliminación gradual de los combustibles fósiles o alinearse con las empresas más contaminantes”, para lo cual pide a las autoridades responsables acordar “objetivos ambiciosos para salvaguardar el presente y el futuro”.

“Exigimos una acción climática justa que proteja ahora a los más vulnerables y garantice los derechos de las generaciones futuras”, insisten las organizaciones firmantes.

Antonio L. Sowers, MA en Teología PASTORAL, Barry University, Movimiento Laudato si’, Director de «Conversión ecológica» del IJPA, que le otorgó un «Certificado de Agradecimiento» por su gran aportación en el cuidado del planeta.

Enrique Rodríguez es arquitecto y urbanista (Catholic University of America -1967, 1970); Certificados: Movimiento cooperativista y desarrollo social (ICI, Panamá. 1969); Energía solar: diseño e instalaciones (CENSOLAR, España. 1992.); actualmente edita El Ignaciano.