Global energy investment is on track to hit a record $3.3 trillion in 2025, according to the new International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual World Energy Investment report, even as the world navigates economic turbulence and rising geopolitical risks.

The lion’s share of that money – about $2.2 trillion – is heading toward clean technologies. That includes renewables, nuclear, grids, battery storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency, and electrification. It’s twice the amount going into fossil fuels.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol says countries are working to insulate themselves from future shocks in the energy sector. “Amid the geopolitical and economic uncertainties that are clouding the outlook for the energy world, we see energy security coming through as a key driver of the growth in global investment.”

China has cemented its status as the world’s top energy investor, spending nearly as much as the US and EU combined. In 2015, it barely edged out the US. Today, it’s pulling far ahead, especially in clean energy. Over the past decade, China has boosted its share of global clean energy investment from 25% to nearly 33%, thanks to massive spending on solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, EVs, and batteries.

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Solar is once again the star. Investment in both rooftop and utility-scale solar is expected to hit $450 billion this year, more than any other energy tech globally. Battery storage is also surging, projected to hit $65 billion in 2025. Nuclear is trending upward too, with capital flows rising 50% over five years to about $75 billion.

The global energy mix continues to shift. In 2015, fossil fuel investment outpaced electricity spending by 30%. But this year, electricity investments, which include generation, grids, and storage, are expected to be 50% higher than what’s being spent on oil, gas, and coal.

But not everything is trending in the right direction. Grid investments, at $400 billion a year, aren’t keeping up with the pace of new generation and electrification. That’s a red flag for electricity security. The IEA warns that grid spending needs to catch up fast, but bottlenecks like permitting delays and tight supply chains for cables and transformers are slowing progress.

China and India also continue to invest in coal. In 2024, China began construction on nearly 100 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants, pushing global coal project approvals to their highest levels since 2015.

Meanwhile, oil investment is expected to dip 6% this year – the first drop since the COVID crash in 2020. That’s mostly due to less spending on US tight oil – oil extracted using fracking, which is processed into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels. On the flip side, investment in liquefied natural gas (LNG) is booming, especially in the US, Qatar, and Canada. Between 2026 and 2028, LNG capacity is set to see its largest ever capacity growth.

One of the report’s most troubling takeaways: Africa is being left behind. Despite accounting for 20% of the world’s population, the continent attracts just 2% of global clean energy investment. Overall energy investment in Africa has fallen by a third in the past decade. The IEA says public finance needs to scale up fast to help unlock private capital and close the gap in developing economies.

The bottom line: Clean energy is surging, solar continues to lead, and China is dominating global spending. But if grid upgrades don’t catch up and the investment gap in the Global South isn’t closed, energy access and climate goals could fall behind.

Read more: 1 in 4 cars sold in 2025 will be EVs, and that’s just the beginning

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Amazon is about to start testing humanoid robots for package delivery. The goal is for the robots to come out of the Rivian electric delivery vans and bring packages to your door.

Over 20,000 Rivian electric vans are currently used to deliver Amazon packages, and the number is expected to increase to 100,000 by the end of the decade.

For now, humans are driving them and delivering the packages to doors, but humanoid robots may soon handle the latter.

The Information released a new report revealing that Amazon has built a new facility to test humanoid robots in an environment mimicking deliveries in the real world:

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As part of the project, Amazon is putting the finishing touches on a “humanoid park,” an indoor obstacle course at one of the company’s San Francisco offices where it will soon test such robots, this person said.

The online retailer reportedly has a Rivian electric delivery van on site to test robots as they come in and out of the van, bringing packages to customers’ doors.

“Amazon hopes humanoid robots will be able to hitch a ride in the back of Amazon’s electric Rivian vans and spring out to deliver packages.”

Amazon plans to test several different humanoid robots, but the report only mentions one from China-based Unitree.

Amazon has extensive experience utilizing autonomous robots in its operations, but this experience is primarily limited to purpose-built robots.

Its experience with humanoid robots is more limited, but the company has used humanoid robots from Agility Robotics:

The big difference is that these robots were used in Amazon’s own warehouses, which are closed environments.

This new test program is to test humanoid robots that will go into the real word to deliver packages to customers.

For now, Amazon plans to test them in its obstacle course, but “field trips” in the real world are already being discussed.

While the online retail giant plans to test several different humanoid robots, it is reportedly working on its own software to power them based DeepSeek-VL2, made by a China-based quant fund, and Qwen, made by China-based Alibaba.

With tax refund season behind us and tariff talks taking a back seat to other dystopian headlines, the month of May gave us our first “clean” look at the US car market in 2025 – and the verdict is in: hybrids are leading the charge while EVs are a mixed bag.

As ever, there are plenty of ways to organize stories like this, and there are more comprehensive sources out there that will give you a deep, model-by-model dive into sales. That said, I’m focusing on the standout performers and “usual suspects” when it comes to EVs and hybrids – but don’t let that stop you from leaving your better ideas in the comments (y’all know I read ’em).

Kia posted 79,007 units in May for a 5.0% YOY gain and the brand’s eighth consecutive month of year-over-year gains. That number was helped along with a record month for the Carnival minivan and both the Telluride and Sportage SUVs. Two car lines that didn’t help were the Kia EV6 and the brand’s flagship EV9 three-row SUV, which sold just 37 units last month.

Some of that is inventory-based, as Kia shifts EV9 production from South Korea to its new EV factory in Gerogia – but no matter the reason, Kia dealers are eager to move their EVs. That means buyers killer deals on the brand EVs and still solid deals on the Kia Sportage Hybrid and Sorrento Plug-in Hybrid, too.

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Hyundai also had a killer month, with total up 8% YOY and 3.7% from April, which works out to a massive 84,521 unit sales for the month of May.

“This period really marks our regular annual pricing review,” Randy Parker, CEO of Hyundai Motor America, told a Reuters reporter yesterday. “We take a look at market dynamics, consumer demand, independent of tariffs.”

Car Dealership Guy reports that those gains were driven by Hyundai’s Elantra N (+141%), and the Venue (+74%), Tucson (+15%), and Palisade (+10%) SUVs, which all set May records. Even the IONIQ 6 electric sedan – my pick as the top Tesla Model 3 alternative – was up 9% YOY, while the first examples of the brand’s three-row IONIQ 9 SUV finally began. Hyundai’s hybrid sales, too, were up 5% for the year.

Toyota saw a massive gain last month as well, delivering nearly 119,000 “electrified” vehicles in May. That number represents a gain of 39% compared to the same month last year, and accounted for almost half of the brand’s total volume for an 11% gain YOY.

Toyota, of course, is the OG in the hybrid space, and in 2025 – nearly thirty years after the launch of the original Toyota Prius in Japan – almost all of the brand’s vehicles are hybrid-only or available as hybrids, including the iconic Corolla and Camry brands, the Sierra minivan, and even the Tacoma and Tundra hybrid pickups.

Over at Ford, CNBC is reporting that sales of the company’s cars were up an impressive 17.2% YOY, driven partly by the brand’s employee pricing deals but even more partly (?) by an absolutely massive 29% jump in the sale of the company’s Ford and Lincoln hybrid models. Lincoln posted its best month of 2025, up 39% YOY.

Sales of the Ford Mustang Mach-E electric crossover held relatively steady, while Ford F-150 Lightning and E-Transit van sales were down some 25% YOY.

On the wrong side of the growth table, Subaru sales dipped more than 10% YOY and 6.6% compared to April, while experience the biggest dip of all the legacy brands, down 18.6% YoY and 23.2% vs April. It’s worth noting that Tesla does not release monthly sales data in the US, but its overseas sales are even worse than that. CNEVPost is reporting that sales are down 15% in China for May, while Tesla sales in Germany fell by more than a third in May, even though EV sales overall rose 44.9% YOY.

Cox Auto’s forecast for May puts the 2025 sales pace at about 16 million unit sales, up slightly from a year earlier but a significant decline from March’s projected sales pace of 17.8 million and April’s 17.3 million unit projected pace.

SOURCES: source links throughout the article.

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