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By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

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Today’s newsletter focuses on Canada, which is enduring its worst ever start to the wildfire season brought on by record-high temperatures and tinder-dry vegetation.

There have been 2,372 fires so far this year and 4.3 million hectares (10.6 million acres) burned, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), roughly 15 times the annual average over the last decade.

Wildfire smoke has continued to plague millions of people across eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, although firefighters made progress in containing some of the massive blazes burning in the province of Quebec. Poor air quality is expected to persist in cities including Ottawa, Toronto, New York and Washington until Sunday when the wind direction shifts.

Elsewhere, and in more positive news, artists Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell are installing solar panels on the rooftops of all the houses on their street in Britain, allowing their owners to become energy independent and slash their carbon footprint, according to a feature on the Reuters Sustainability page on June 12. 

1. International help rolls in to fight persistent Canadian wildfires

Allies around the world have promised to increase their help to Canada in its fight against hundreds of blazes that have swept through the country in an early and intense start to the wildfire season. Wildfires spread in the western Canadian province of British Columbia on Friday, while hundreds of fires continued to burn on the other side of the country in Quebec, sending wildfire smoke billowing across North American cities.

Smoke rises from a wildfire in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, in this screen grab taken from a video, June 8, 2023. BC Wildlife Service/Handout via REUTERS

2. What are the health risks from wildfire smoke?

Click here to find out what you need to know about the risks of the lingering smoke that has left the air quality in New York City, for example, ranked among the worst in the world on Tuesday and Wednesday.

3. Explainer: How El Nino could impact the world’s weather in 2023-24

Countries are racing to prepare for extreme weather later this year as the world tips into an El Nino — a natural climate phenomenon that fuels tropical cyclones in the Pacific and boosts rainfall and flood risk in parts of the Americas and elsewhere.

4. EU offers tweaks to contested nature law in bid for support

The European Commission has offered to scale back some targets in its flagship EU law to protect nature, in a bid to find a deal on the proposed legislation which some lawmakers are attempting to block.

5. Replanting the Amazon could help save the world’s climate. Here’s why it’s so hard to do

Restoring decimated portions of Brazil’s rainforest has largely fallen to nonprofits. They’re battling illegal land-grabbers, tight budgets, botanical mysteries – and the ticking clock.

The U.S. government’s effort to boost clean energy production by ramping up research into seaweed as a potential source of biofuel has some biologists worried about its threat to endangered North Atlantic right whales. Click on the image for the video or on the link here for the full story.

Australia’s weather bureau said there was a 70% chance this year of an El Nino weather pattern developing, typically associated with hotter, drier weather. The Bureau of Meteorology said its climate models and indicators have now met the criteria to raise the level to “alert” from “watch” for the possibility of an El Nino event.

47%

U.S. solar energy installations soared 47% in the first quarter, according to an industry report published by research firm Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) trade group, as easing panel supplies alleviated industry gridlock and allowed many stalled big projects to be completed and connected to the grid.

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