​JANUARY

• ​​China becomes the world’s largest importer of LNG (and, the US is a net-exporter of LNG for the first time in 60 years).
• US military announces that “renewable energy” is a superior defensive strategy.

​FEBRUARY

• PG&E, the largest power utility in the US, files for bankruptcy.
• The Green New Deal resolution formally proposed in Congress by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

​MARCH

• Bill Gates tells Congress that he will personally invest $1 billion and raise $1 billion more in private capital to match federal funds for low-carbon energy RD&D.
• Wind power passes hydroelectric power as the most prominent source of renewable energy in the US.

APRIL

• UK cybersecurity agency finds serious security vulnerabilities in several hundred Huawei products. 
• The Great Lakes region is now warming 1° F faster than the rest of the US.

MAY

• Australia now the top consumer of coal per capita (surpassing the UK); meanwhile, renewables generate more electricity than coal in US.
• Earthworms discovered in the Boreal Forest (the region across North America and Eurasia just below the Arctic).

JUNE

• President Trump’s EPA unveils The Affordable Clean Energy Plan, which will replace Obama’s power plant rule.
• Grid energy storage market in US already doubled YoY.

JULY

• For first time ever, US crude oil production surpasses 12 million bpd.
• Impact investing, also known as "sustainable, responsible, and impact" investing (SRI) now totals close to $12 trillion in US assets under management.

AUGUST

• US sets new daily record highs for natural gas consumption by the power sector.
• White House invokes Defense Production Act, classifying 17 obscure rare earth elements as "essential to the national defense."

SEPTEMBER

• Trump administration instructs EPA to expand E15 ethanol refinery requirements, and grants 'waivers' to oil refineries, allowing them to avoid the E15 requirement.
• Fires are burning out of control in Africa, Europe, Asia, and California; there have been 74,000 individual fires in Brazil so far this year.

OCTOBER

• Rick Perry resigns as Secretary of the US Department of Energy.
• Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for their work in the development of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

NOVEMBER

• President Trump submits notice to the United Nations that the US will formally withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
• The company that generates the most carbon emissions: Saudi Aramco (meanwhile, Saudi Aramco again postpones world’s largest-ever stock market IPO listing).

DECEMBER

• Russia’s gas giant Gazprom opens its "Power of Siberia" pipeline to China; at capacity, this pipeline supplies China with 9% of its total natural gas demand.
• Total amount of natural gas flaring burning enough to power Texas; North Dakota flaring more than any other state.