Climate & Energy News: 31 October 2026

Fully electric passenger cars reached a record 31% share of European registrations in September, with 422,000 BEVs registered, up 63% from a year earlier. Total plugin sales rose 49% to a record 590,000, while year to date BEV share stands at 25%, already above the full year 2025 result. The growth is an encouraging sign for mid 2030s electrification goals, even as plugin hybrids grew more slowly and petrol and diesel shares fell.

Katoen Natie has put two all electric mobile harbour cranes into service at the Port of Antwerp, with four more joining across three terminals. The completed fleet will include four 200 tonne cranes and two 150 tonne machines, with paired lifting capacity of 400 tonnes. Konecranes' design uses grid power for lifting and batteries for movement, and Katoen Natie expects the six cranes to displace up to 500,000 litres of diesel a year.

Environmental campaigners protested outside Bute House in Edinburgh over the Scottish government's approval of a new gas fired power station at Peterhead. Groups called it a catastrophic failure, saying fossil fuels drive extreme weather and add to household energy bills. The protest also followed UK government approval of the Jackdaw gas field near Aberdeen, while the Scottish government said it remains committed to net zero by 2045.

The US EPA has announced plans to decommission its online web archive at the end of the year, which would remove tens of thousands of public environmental resources. The archive has held fact sheets, reports, policy changes and regulatory actions dating back at least 20 years. A previous attempt to close it in late January 2022 was delayed after public backlash, with the agency spending about $2 million a year to maintain it.

A Tesla Semi caught fire on Interstate 880 in Hayward on Tuesday night after the driver pulled over near Highway 92, with no crash and the driver unharmed. California Highway Patrol closed both directions over toxic smoke, leaving southbound lanes shut for nearly ten hours. It is the second major Tesla Semi highway closure in just over two years, after a 2024 fire near Emigrant Gap.

At the Allerton Project on the Leicestershire Rutland border, farm bird abundance has risen 145% since monitoring began in 1992, while national numbers fell 23%. Director Alastair Leake says experiments such as direct drilling into crop residue leave seeds, earthworms and insects for birds, unlike ploughed fields. The 320 hectare demonstration farm uses sustainable agriculture and habitat creation to show how food production can support wildlife.

A Jamaican court issued a temporary injunction preventing the government from restricting access to Little Dunn's River in St Ann while a case continues, in a fight to end the 1956 Beach Control Act. The act has allowed governments to restrict beach access and sell coastlines to luxury hoteliers. The government has said it will appeal, while campaigners say the ruling offers hope for other cases seeking public beach access.

A year after Typhoon Halong's storm surge destroyed Kwigillingok, an Alaskan Yup'ik village, most of its 361 residents remain displaced in Bethel, Anchorage and nearby communities. About 30 people have returned, but the village is under a no go home order because housing, boardwalks, plumbing and the water pipeline are damaged. The slow recovery highlights how extreme weather can uproot remote Alaska Native communities.

Pennsylvania's DEP issued a permit in May that lets companies reclassify conventional oil and gas wells as mineral brine wells. That would allow them to sell radioactive wastewater as a product and spread it on roads to control dust and ice, while any oil or gas produced could also be sold as waste. Critics say the rule makes it easier to dump toxic, radioactive waste, and one advocate says the brine does not reduce dust.

COP17 in Yerevan ended Saturday with countries signing measures to accelerate action on 2030 biodiversity targets, including protecting 30% of the planet and restoring degraded ecosystems. The first global review says targets will not be achieved unless action is rapidly accelerated, while finance remains a key gap. Panama's environment minister called the consensus process designed to fail and urged majority voting and one annual COP.

Cumbria Wildlife Trust has started work to restore 435 hectares of damaged peatland in Skiddaw Forest, including repairing a 6km boundary fence. The forest contains one of the largest continuous areas of blanket bog in the Lake District and acts as a carbon store. The trust says the work will slow water flow, helping protect downstream communities from flooding and supporting wildlife such as sundews, sphagnum mosses, dragonflies and snipe.

India's module manufacturing capacity has expanded at remarkable speed, while domestic content requirements are pushing investment into the more complex cell manufacturing sector. Suppliers are also eyeing moves into wafer and ingot manufacturing ahead of further expansion of the domestic content rules. Activity has been more limited in polysilicon manufacturing.

As of September 2026, over 16% of new utility-scale solar capacity added this year is co-located with operable battery storage, compared with 2% in 2017. Reported plans for the last three months of this year show the share could rise to 19%, while longer-term plans point to more than 30% in 2027 and 2028. Operators can direct solar output to the grid or battery depending on wholesale prices, which tend to fall when solar contributions are high.

The Electric Vehicle Council says BEV and PHEV sales in Australia have doubled comparing H1 2025 with H2 2026, with a new EV sold every 100 seconds. Public charging has kept up with demand, with 4,268 public locations and 11,600 public AC and DC connectors. The report warns that possible removal of New Vehicle Efficiency Standards and the Fringe Benefit Tax exemption could affect uptake.

The UK could see as many as 10 consecutive days without rain after an unsettled end to October brought back-to-back storms. The Environment Agency said England experienced its wettest week in two years thanks to Storms Austen and Boelo, while rainfall from another low-pressure area also contributed to the UK total. High pressure is expected to bring largely dry and calm conditions, with fog and reduced visibility possible, into early November.