The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: Renewables Are Surging Worldwide—But Going Backward in US Under Trump
Dear Diary. Have you ever seen a video of Trump railing about windmills killing birds or being an eyesore then loving “beautiful clean coal?” This situation here in the U.S. Is laughable if it didn’t have very serious ramifications. It’s no wonder that Dr. Michael Mann proclaimed that it would be “game over” for our climate if Trump got elected. Well that did happen, but he along with the rest of climate activists will continue to fight to reduce the globe’s fever. Every single tenth of a degree above preindustrial conditions counts towards reducing hardship even if (and probably when) we exceed that 2.0°C limit.
Here are more details from Common Dreams:
Renewables Surging Worldwide—But Going Backward in US Under Trump | Common Dreams
This aerial photo shows a 100-megawatt solar thermal project at Jinta Multi-Energy Complementary Base in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, China on August 1, 2025. (Photo by Cao Hongzu/VCG via Getty Images)
Renewables Surging Worldwide—But Going Backward in US Under Trump
Despite US backsliding, solar and wind generated more electricity than coal worldwide for the first time this year.
Oct 07, 2025
Led by Chinese expansion, global adoption of renewable energy is accelerating, with the world’s wind and solar farms generating more electricity than coal for the first time this year—however, the US embrace of fossil fuels under President Donald Trump is proving a drag on humanity’s transition to clean power.
The climate think tank Ember on Tuesday published its Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights report, which found that solar and wind outpaced demand growth in the first half of 2025. Solar generation grew by a record 306 terawatt-hours (TWh)—a 31% increase—with China accounting for more than half the world’s increase.
In a major milestone, solar and wind overtook coal electricity generation for the first time ever, as renewables grew by 363 TWh (+7.7%) to reach 5,072 TWh, while coal generation decreased by 31 TWh to 4,896 TWh.
“This analysis confirms what we are witnessing on the ground: Solar and wind are no longer marginal technologies—they are driving the global power system forward,” Global Solar Council CEO Sonia Dunlop said in a statement Tuesday.
“The fact that renewables have overtaken coal for the first time marks a historic shift,” Dunlop added. “But to lock in this progress, governments and industry must accelerate investment in solar, wind, and battery storage, ensuring that clean, affordable, and reliable electricity reaches communities everywhere.”
Two years after agreeing at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, in Dubai to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, many key nations have failed to make significant progress toward that goal. Chief among these countries is the United States, where the return of Trump and his “drill, baby, drill” policies has resulted in the International Energy Agency (IEA) revising the country’s renewables growth outlook for 2030 downward by a staggering 45%.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by Trump on July 4 includes billions of dollars in handouts for the fossil fuel industry, boosts drilling on millions of acres of public lands, mandates oil and gas lease sales, and imposes new fees on renewable development.
Additionally, the US Department of Energy recently announced a $625 million investment “to expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry.“ This, as the DOE dramatically slashes funding for clean energy projects. Other federal agencies have similarly turned their backs on renewable development under Trump.
The good news is that despite backsliding by countries including the US and Japan, the IEA says that global renewable generation could double by the end of the decade, with 80% of new clean energy capacity expected to come from the sun.
Even in the United States, the combination of all renewables—wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, and geothermal—produced 9.9% more electricity during the first half of 2025 than it did a year ago, providing more than a quarter of all US electricity generation.
”Notwithstanding enactment of the anti-renewables provisions in the Trump megabill, solar and wind continue to power ahead,“ noted SUN DAY Campaign executive director Ken Bossong. ”Meanwhile the electrical output [year-to-date] by the Republicans’ preferred technologies—nuclear power and natural gas—has actually fallen.“
Climate campaigners hailed the continued growth of clean energy.
“Renewables overtaking coal for the very first time is a sign of how the economics of power generation have been transformed,” Julia Skorupska, head of secretariat at the Powering Past Coal Alliance, said in a statement Monday.
“There is a clear economic case for replacing coal with renewables, which are now the cheapest forms of energy in most of the world,” Skorupska continued. “The transition from coal to renewables underpins competitiveness, enables energy security, creates good jobs, and lowers electricity prices and air pollution risks for citizens.”
“With COP30 around the corner, countries have the opportunity to work together to accelerate this shift,“ she added, referring to next month’s UN climate summit in Belém, Brazil. ”We need genuine partnerships that enable coal-dependent countries to speed up their coal-to-clean transition, placing them right at the cutting edge of the energy revolution.“
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Wednesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)