👏🏽 Congratulations to the following companies selected for lightning intros at our event this Thursday in Madrid with IE and South Summit!
🔥 We only have 3 spots left for the Madrid lightning intros—founders can APPLY HERE!
😀 Without further ado, read below to turn that frown upside down.
THE IV — June 2, 2026
Oil prices and the “drill baby drill” mantra got you stressed? We’ve got the antidote: solar, energy storage, and electric buses. Not to mention a bit of a reprieve from the US redistricting wars. Yeah, we’re not quite f*d.
Even though the Iran War is resulting an oil price spike, US energy storage capacity is also soaring.
While the Iran war pushed oil towards $100 a barrel, US energy storage just had its strongest quarter in history. Developers brought 9.7 GWh of new battery storage online so far this year, up 32% year-over-year. The US has now crossed 40 GW of installed storage, with a record 24 GW more planned this year.
🔗 https://www.pandwsolar.com/u-s-energy-storage-sector-hits-record-numbers-in-q1-2026/
Your electric bill may be giving you a headache, yet Ontario just built one of Canada’s biggest batteries to push back.
The Napanee Battery Energy Storage System — 250 MW / 1,000 MWh, a joint venture between Atura Power and Ameresco in Ontario, just switched on. It can power up to 250,000 homes for four hours during peak demand. As war roils global oil markets, locally-sited storage is the clearest hedge a community has: power that can’t be embargoed.
Screw diesel fumes, am I right? Latin America just hit a number nobody saw coming.
Latin America now has more than 10,000 electric buses in operation, up from under 8,000 a year earlier. For dense cities where buses carry millions daily, it’s quiet proof that clean public transportation isn’t a rich-country luxury.
🔗 https://www.electrive.com/2026/05/28/latin-america-reaches-10000-electric-buses-in-operation/
Disillusioned by politicians slamming climate? A fossil-fuel company completed one of North America’s biggest solar farms.
Canadian energy giant Enbridge brought online the first 400 MW phase of its $1.1 billion Sequoia Solar project in Callahan County, Texas. This is already one of the largest solar farms in the US, and a second 415 MW phase should be completed by year end. The power flows to AT&T, Toyota, and PepsiCo under long-term contracts.
🔗 https://electrek.co/2026/05/27/north-americas-largest-solar-farms-texas-sequoia-enbridge/
Another clean energy positive—the EU’s battery fleet just grew tenfold.
European battery storage capacity hit 77.3 GWh — up from under 8 GWh at the end of 2021, or a 10x increase in 4 years. The EU added a record 27.1 GWh in 2025 alone, a 45% annual jump, with grid-scale batteries now the majority of new installs. France’s largest battery (248 MW / 496 MWh, by Neoen) is about to turn on, as well.
🔗 https://energyindustryreview.com/power/battery-storage-capacity-record-growth-and-trends-in-2026/
Eye-watering utility bills are being addressed by New York—which just put $1 billion back in people’s pockets.
More than 8 million New York households will get one-time energy rebate checks between September and December under the state’s new POWER program. The rebates total $1 billion, with joint filers earning under $150,000 receiving $200.
🔗 https://www.news10.com/capitol/new-york-energy-rebate-program/
The redistricting wars are getting uglier. A federal court just drew a line.
A three-judge federal panel blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map, ruling it could not be used in the 2026 elections after finding it diluted Black voters’ representation in violation of the Constitution.