An Coimisiún Pleanála has written to the operator of Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, Co Clare, asking it to redo the ecological paperwork behind a ballroom. Clare planners approved the building back in February. It’s a single-storey hall of about 1,240 sq m, seating 320, replacing the marquee the resort currently throws weddings in. The approval carried a condition about Vertigo angustior, the 2mm narrow-mouthed whorl snail that lives in the dunes behind the course and is listed under Annex II of the EU Habitats Directive.

Two energy financings closed within hours of each other, aimed at the same shortage from opposite ends. Antares, developing one-megawatt reactors for United States military bases, raised $370 million in equity and $100 million in debt in a round co-led by Paradigm and Caffeinated. French carrier Orange and infrastructure investor Morrison agreed to build a data center platform in France targeting 400 megawatts, backed by a €3 billion investment program.

Oklo Inc. has cleared a major regulatory milestone for its Groves Isotope Test Reactor in Lockhart, Texas, after the U.S. Department of Energy granted startup authorization under the agency’s Reactor Pilot Program. The approval lets Oklo begin loading nuclear fuel, run startup testing, and move toward first criticality at the facility. The pace of the buildout stands out. Oklo went from breaking ground to DOE startup authorization in just over ten months, a span that included constructing the reactor facility, standing up the operating organization, training personnel, writing nuclear programs and procedures, and sourcing fuel and major equipment commercially.

The low-carbon hydrogen sector is shedding its boom-year rhetoric. After the speculative buildup of 2022–2024 and a sobering retraction of government support in 2025, the industry is settling into what analysts at C&EN describe as a pragmatic rhythm of project-based progress rather than projected demand. The distinction matters: hydrogen developers spent several years chasing customers who hadn’t yet committed to buy. That era appears to be over. The Middle East reset.

President Trump’s Executive Order 14301, “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” attached a hard deadline to America’s nuclear ambitions: at least three participants in the Department of Energy’s Reactor Pilot Program were meant to achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. That deadline has now passed, and it functions as a real-time stress test of how fast the “nuclear renaissance” rhetoric can translate into operating reactors. The pilot program mechanism.

The gap between the US and the rest of the world on offshore wind has widened into a chasm. While Europe and Asia are expanding auctions, the Trump administration has spent 2026 systematically paying developers to walk away from federal offshore wind leases entirely. The buyout pattern. In March 2026, the administration reached an agreement with French energy company TotalEnergies to cancel its offshore wind leases in the New York Bight and Carolina Long Bay regions — the US refunded $928 million in lease fees, and TotalEnergies agreed to invest an equivalent sum into fossil fuel production in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, while pledging not to develop any new US offshore wind projects.