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Welcome back to Current Climate. After a sluggish start to the year, U.S. investment in clean energy and transportation jumped in 2026’s second quarter to $75 billion, up 4% from a year ago and the second-highest level ever, according to data compiled by Clean Investment Monitor.
The improvement was largely driven by higher consumer purchases of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, as well as batteries for home energy storage and electric heat pumps. In total, sales of those products rose 21% from a year ago to $41 billion, the report found. Notably, residential battery storage installations topped residential solar panel sales for the second quarter in a row. Heat pump purchases totaled $7 billion, up 4% from 2025’s second quarter.
Though demand for clean energy has been driven heavily by data centers’ insatiable need for power, the uptick in consumer spending in the segment is encouraging and could tick higher. In the case of electric vehicle sales, California this month kicked off its new rebate program, in conjunction with 13 automakers, that offers first-time EV buyers up to $3,500 off the price of new models. That’s likely to benefit the overall U.S. market since the Golden State buys more battery-electric autos than any other state. And if other states begin offering similar programs, look for the EV market to rebound after crashing last fall when the Trump administration killed a $7,500 federal rebate.
On the energy side, utility-scale solar and battery installations continue to be the top source of renewable electricity investment, totaling $19 billion in the second quarter. That was up 8% from Q1 but 5% below the year-ago period.
The Big Read
Iron Vs Carbon: Funds Surge For Makers Of Batteries That Store Power For Days
Form Energy, which makes iron-based batteries to hold electricity for days, said it raised $750 million to expand production. That follows a $550 million raise by rival Antora Energy to accelerate production of its thermal batteries made from carbon blocks that also hold power for at least 100 hours. Unsurprisingly, data center power demand underpins the investment spike.
Form, which began shipping its iron-air batteries this year built at its Weirton, West Virginia, plant, said the latest round, led by T. Rowe Price, boosts its total funding to $2 billion. The company didn’t immediately provide a valuation figure with the latest funds, though Pitchbook estimates the deal values the Somerville, Massachusetts-based company at $4.3 billion. Sunnyvale, California-based Antora has raised $1 billion as of July 31 far and is seeking a second plant beyond its current factory in Silicon Valley.
Both companies are focused on making batteries out of cheap, domestically available materials that can store power at much lower cost than shorter-term lithium-based battery chemistries, and that also have little to no risk of catching on fire. The technology is also ideal when paired with large-scale solar or wind farms, ensuring a steady supply of cheap, carbon-free energy.
“Solar is the cheapest form of energy in history, but the challenge has been that you can’t use it to solve all of our problems because it’s intermittent,” said Brook Porter, cofounder of G2 Ventures, which is backing Antora. “Long duration storage is really the unlock to connect this incredibly low-cost intermittent supply to meet the demand of all of these loads. It’s been a holy grail for a very long time.”
Hot Topic
Courtesy of Costa Samaras
Costa Samaras, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, on proposed budget cuts for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
What’s the value of weather and climate data collected by NOAA and the National Weather Service?
I think around the country, NOAA is one of the government agencies that probably has an immediate connection to people’s lives: whether it’s the weather service; whether it’s understanding the threats of tornadoes or hurricanes; whether it’s the ways that the agricultural community depends on this for accurate information; or to keep people safe from wildfires. The agency is a frontline scientific service organization for the American public that has been invested in by American taxpayers over many, many decades to provide that capability. So while short-term budget cuts like we’re seeing proposed now have an effect this year, they may have an effect for many years. Some of these capabilities are easy to break apart and will be more expensive to reconstitute.
At a time when Americans are facing increased risk from wildfires and extreme weather, it seems pennywise and pound foolish to remove the capabilities for communities to understand what threats they’re facing from the weather system.
After a 10% cut in 2025, the Trump administration wants to slash NOAA’s budget more than 25% in fiscal 2027 to $4.4 billion. What would be the impact of that?
So to get a sense of scale, the current total annual budget is about $6.2 billion. And they want to cut more than a billion dollars from that. Those are cuts that people are going to feel. That’s a giant proportion of the agency budget that, if enacted, lots of functions would go away. That’s in comparison to other spending in the federal government – for example, the proposal to increase the Pentagon’s budget to $1.5 trillion. In the case of NOAA, I don’t think we’re talking about a lot of money. But in the sense of the scale, the dollars saved are minimal versus the damage that those cuts would do to people’s lives around the country.
Separate from the budget, NOAA lost hundreds of veteran researchers last year who took early buyout offers. Is that also a problem for ongoing operations?
That loss of capacity, which we have invested in, is bigger than this year’s budget. It represents a fundamental loss of expertise throughout the country in these agencies or these departments that are part of NOAA, and that are very hard to build back and expensive to build back.
But for the budget process, the executive branch proposed a set of cuts and then Congress negotiates on how much to actually cut. The executive branch is asking, in this case, for more cuts than Congress was willing to do last year. But that’s not reassuring. Communities will have to hope that Congress cuts less than what the executive branch is seeking.
The administration argues that some of its functions could be handled by private companies.
NOAA has capabilities and functions that the private sector would not do, nor could do. It doesn’t have the capabilities and long-term sensor networks to enable the type of analysis NOAA provides for communities. The other challenge is the United States taxpayer has invested in this capability over many, many decades, and small towns and individual people should not have to pay to know if it’s going to rain. That is a challenge especially for smaller communities. If some of these functions were privatized, then it becomes a willingness or ability to pay to understand if your community’s in danger. That’s not a good model for community safety.
What Else We’re Reading
Where the water once flowed: Rivers and lakes dry up as droughts take toll (Reuters)
Trump administration ends support for NOAA’s flagship Arctic climate reports (CNN)
Why Illinois has struggled to turn old coal sites into solar farms (Canary Media)
With gas prices high, people in developing countries are lining up to buy electric scooters (New York Times)