Dear Readers,
This month fires are ravaging the Iberian peninsula and southern France, leaving behind a trail of destruction on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, we are in the throes of a Super El Niño, the likes the world has never before seen. Warm waters in the eastern Pacific are driving hotter wetter weather around the world, and in the words of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, “adding fuel to a planet already on fire with scorching heat domes, apocalyptic wildfires, and record hot seas.” The wildfire activity in France and Spain became so intense they are generating pyrocumulonimbus , a towering type of "fire cloud" that draws convective energy from the heat of the fires.
But perhaps the real news is not the 2026 Super El Niño but the green economy that is being built through it. The global sustainable finance market is expected to reach $1,621bn of issuance for the year. Roughly $2.2 trillion out of $3.4 trillion in total global energy investments is dedicated to clean energy technologies, grid infrastructure, and storage.
The Green Place will cover both the 2026 Super El Niño and this historic transition in how the global economy is powered. Also this month we’ll look at the growing push for rare earth elements (REE) recovery. I developed a tool for this which can be found at https://recovery.looplens.co/ As usual, feel free to reply with your thoughts on this publication or the tool. Thank you so much for reading. Best,
Ted
Global energy investment is on pace for a record $3.4 trillion in 2026, and clean energy is now pulling decisively ahead of fossil fuels: the IEA's World Energy Investment 2026 report puts $2.2 trillion into grids, storage, renewables, nuclear, and efficiency this year, versus roughly $1.2 trillion for oil, gas, and coal combined. Solar alone claims more than any single fossil fuel category with $365 billion projected to be invested in solar globally, roughly 55 percent of total renewables and 40% of the investment in global power generation.
The summer's marquee deal came from Masdar, which closed $6.1 billion in July for what it calls the world's first gigascale round-the-clock solar-and-battery plant, including a $5.1 billion loan backed by 13 international and regional banks. Operations are set to begin in 2027. The size of that financing is itself the signal: banks are now willing to underwrite solar-plus-storage as baseload power, not a supplemental source.
China is moving forward with $25 billion in investments in four new nuclear nuclear power projects. It aims to be producing energy from fusion by 2030 following a successful testing of two superconducting magnets in June by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP).
For the second time this summer, a federal court has sided with the clean energy buildout over industry and administration resistance. On July 31, the D.C. Circuit unanimously upheld FERC Order 2023, the rule forcing grid operators to process new power-project applications in batches instead of one at a time — aimed at an interconnection backlog where solar, wind, and storage make up the overwhelming majority of projects stuck waiting, in some cases for more than five years.
Utilities and grid operators had sued to overturn the rule as regulatory overreach; the court found FERC acted well within its authority and rejected every petition. Combined with June's dismissal of the administration's push to freeze wind permitting, a pattern is forming: courts, not Congress or the White House, are turning out to be the transition's most reliable backstop.
Last month we showed why China's rare earth dominance is a processing story, not a geology story. Refining about 90% of the world's rare earths and making 94% of its permanent magnets, China has cornered the supply chain for rare earth elements. This month we're asking what the rest of the world can actually do about that. The most concrete answer so far? Recycling!
The opportunity is enormous because there’s so little of it happening today. The IEA's Global Critical Minerals Outlook expects global rare earth recycling rates to roughly double, from about 10% today to 20% by 2040, and USGS's own 2026 assessment describes current recovery from magnets, batteries, and lamps as “limited.”
This is starting to change. In southwestern France, Carester's Caremag subsidiary is building a €216 million recycling and refining plant, backed by €110 million from Japan's JOGMEC and Iwatani Corporation and €106 million from the French government. At capacity, it will recycle 2,000 tons of scrap magnets and refine 5,000 tons of mining concentrate a year, producing 600 tons of dysprosium and terbium oxides, about 15% of current global output, plus 800 tons of neodymium and praseodymium. JOGMEC and Iwatani have already signed a long-term contract for half the heavy rare earth output, destined for EV motors, offshore wind turbines, and electronics.
The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act sets the policy floor underneath deals like this: 25% of the bloc's annual critical-material consumption must come from domestic recycling by 2030. Recycling won't replace mining, and it won't make the West self-sufficient on its own. It will ease the reliance of the West on Chinese REEs. A magnet that's already been refined once skips the years-long mine-to-market timeline new extraction requires. It's the fastest lever available.
Read the full article at the Green Place: https://greenplace.earth/articles/buried-treasure-the-case-for-recycling-rare-earth-elements
Rare Earth Element Recovery Tool: www.recovery.looplens.co