Breaking Waves: Ocean News

US energy department warns of potential for outages in PJM Interconnection, serving 67 million from DC to Chicago The risk ⁠of power outages ⁠is expected to ​escalate across a broad swath of the United States on Wednesday as intense heat will test the capacity of electricity supplies ⁠serving millions of homes and businesses from the midwest through the mid-Atlantic. The US Department of Energy warned of the potential for heightened blackout risks in ⁠the PJM Interconnection, the largest US electric grid, which serves 67 million people in ​a territory stretching from Washington DC to ‌Chicago. Continue reading...

I will calmly read all the threatening letters and await the court case against me. But I will take a stand even if our government won’t I can’t even remember when I decided to stop paying the sewage element of my Thames Water bill. It might have been after reading this headline from the Guardian in July 2025: “Serious pollution incidents by English water companies rose 60% last year,” with the subheading: “Environment Agency records 75 serious incidents among total of 2,800, with Thames Water being worst offender.” Living in London means that my supplier is Thames Water, which makes a profit out of pollution. I decided that if the government wouldn’t act, I could at least do my part and not pay for this travesty. Jenny Jones is a Green party peer Continue reading...

Arthur Downing, author of Power and the People: A History of British Energy, says all-encompassing rapid transition will need a mutualised system Have you ever wondered why it is that most houses in the UK are reliant on gas boilers? Not what’s stopping more people from replacing them with heat pumps, but instead why and how the gas boiler became so ubiquitous in the first place? Arthur Downing, the author of the new book Power and the People: A History of British Energy, can tell you exactly why. “We only have boilers in our houses because of a state-owned enterprise that went into everybody’s home and installed natural gas-suitable appliances at no direct cost,” he says. The nationalised gas industry of the 1940s to the 1980s, which oversaw this huge project, was for three decades one of the “most dynamic, innovative, efficient industries in Britain”, Downing says. Yet few of us would use these terms to describe it as such now. Continue reading...

In today’s newsletter: Communities from Scotland to India are pushing back against datacentres, warning they threaten energy supplies and the climate Good morning. This summer, datacentres have become targets of resistance across the world. Ever since the arrival of ChatGPT, big tech has been lobbying for the creation of enormous new facilities. Many governments claim they’re essential in any country that wants to cash in on AI. Campaigners argue datacentres drain resources and exacerbate the climate crisis. The Scottish National Party has backed a moratorium on new developments; so has the Greens. The boom has been immense, and so has the backlash. Today’s newsletter explains why. UK politics | Andy Burnham has blamed Brexit and Margaret Thatcher for a decade of low growth in the UK, arguing that Britain needs to be brutally honest about having taken “a series of wrong turns” in the last 40 years. Nepal-Tibet | A week on from the flash flooding disaster, authorities are urging relatives of the thousands of missing and dead to provide blood samples. Middle East | The US has launched new airstrikes on Iranian targets, prompting counter strikes by Tehran targeting American interests in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, fuelling concerns about a ⁠wider renewal of hostilities. Ukraine | Russia has opened a deadly new phase in its war against Ukraine by deliberately targeting the country’s railway network, with six employees killed on Tuesday in the latest strikes on Kyiv. US news | Mark Carney has rebuked Donald Trump’s administration and urged officials in Washington to “start being serious” amid escalation trade tensions between the US and Canada. Continue reading...