Clean Energy & Renewables: All The Good News in June 2026
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Synopsis of all the top stories from around the world.
Fusion Breakthrough: Scientists consider fusion energy the “holy grail” of clean power sources. It can provide limitless electricity without the carbon emissions or radioactive waste. Now, scientists in South Korea have taken a step towards making commercial fusion power a reality following a breakthrough with their “artificial star.” The hope is that one day, something like this could power your home. While the dream of fusion powering cities around the world with clean energy is still probably decades away, every breakthrough provides scientists with insights that will be used in fusion reactors down the line.
First Time Ever: Wind and solar just hit a major global milestone. For the first time ever, they generated more electricity than gas. Wind and solar produced 22 percent of the world’s electricity, compared to 20 percent from gas.
Tumbleweed: California’s new eight-hour battery is making its grid even more renewable. California has switched on Tumbleweed, the first major US battery project able to discharge power for eight hours, twice the usual duration for grid batteries.
Asia's Electric Tuk-Tuk Boom: The noisy, fume-belching three-wheelers are the backbone of the region’s transport system. Now, battery-powered versions are transforming economies and drastically reducing pollution.
First in USA: A long-awaited giant leap in battery technology has taken another significant shuffle forward - thanks to the first fitting of a new type of hyper-efficient fast-charging battery in a road-going car in North America. A Dodge Charger guinea-pig vehicle has just been fitted with this revolutionary 'solid-state' battery pack for on-the-road testing.
Oz Battery Boom: Australia has become a global battery superstar, adding more grid-scale storage per person over the past two years than any other country. “Even for the true believers, the rush on batteries in Australia in the past two years has drastically exceeded expectations. At the grid level, more new battery capacity came online in 2025 than in the previous eight years combined."
Electric Truck Milestone: An electric semi-trailer truck just hauled 49 tons from Canberra to Sydney on a single charge.
Officially Online: SunZia, an $11 billion wind-and-power-line project and one of the largest US clean energy transmission projects ever built, is officially online - carrying renewable electricity from New Mexico to customers across the Southwest. Enough electricity for around 1 million US homes.
US Clean Energy: "The economics have officially overtaken the politics."
EV Boom in EU: Global EV sales reached 1.8 million units in May 2026, according to new data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, bringing total sales for the first five months of the year to 7.5 million vehicles. That was up 3 percent from May 2025 and 7 percent from April 2026. The global picture continues to be a tale of three very different markets: Europe is booming (up 26 percent YTD), China is still recovering from a slow start to the year, and North America remains stuck in reverse.
US EV Disrupter: Slate Auto, the American EV startup, finally revealed pricing for its bare-bones electric truck this week: $24,950. It's likely to seriously disrupt the market for America's legacy auto manufacturers, and may give many, many consumers exactly what they have been waiting for.
Electric Engine Room: Asia is likely to be the engine room of this next, electric century, because it now generates more than half the world’s electricity, accounts for three-quarters of demand growth since 2000, and manufactures over 95 percent of solar panels, 85 percent of batteries and 75 percent of wind turbines. The region’s fossil fuel weakness may become its advantage: with only 4 percent of global oil and gas reserves and a $1.1 trillion annual import bill, electrification now offers the cheapest and quickest path to energy security and economic growth.
