Axios

ERCOT, the electricity grid that serves most of Texas, delivered more power on Wednesday than it ever had, only to deliver even more on Thursday, setting a new system-wide peak demand record of 73,259 megawatts. Friday’s demand is forecasted to be even higher, but the worst might not come until Monday.

Why it matters: The Texas grid is an energy-only market, which, unlike capacity markets, pays power plants only when they produce energy. This summer has been seen as a make-or-break test for this market strategy, and so far it is passing.

Grin, a Latin America-focused scooter startup, is participating in Silicon Valley's Y Combinator accelerator program.

Bottom line: E-scooters aren't just a U.S. transportation phenomenon.

A federal judge on Thursday tossed out a New York lawsuit against five major oil companies, seeking to collect billions of dollars in damages to protect the city from climate change.

Why it matters, per Axios' Ben Geman: This comes after a California federal judge dismissed a similar case. Together, the two rulings suggest that cities and states face an uphill battle in trying to use federal courts to get money from oil companies to help pay for the effects of global warming on their regions, such as sea-level rise.

A scorching heat wave has swept across Scandinavia, breaking all-time heat records into the Arctic Circle. Meanwhile, Sweden is facing a major wildfire outbreak, and the forests of Siberia are ablaze after weeks of extreme heat.

Why it matters: The heat wave and wildfires are causing evacuations and threatening communities in Sweden, where the area burned already exceeds that of the average fire season by thousands of acres, per the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. Plus, the wildfire smoke is hitching a ride on mid-to-upper atmospheric winds to as far away as the U.S.

As the costs for fossil fuels continue to rise and the prices for renewable energy hit all-time lows, fast-moving startups and adaptive incumbents are developing new energy service models.

The big picture: Traditional utility models, organized around the subsidized delivery of commodity electricity, are facing pressure from distributed-service models, which promise to deliver the tailored, efficient and connected energy services to power emerging smart-home markets and meet increasingly discerning consumers.

Human activities are altering Earth's seasons in a way that is creating a greater contrast between summer and winter in much of North America, Europe and Eurasia, a new study finds.

Why it's important: The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the first to find a human "fingerprint" on the seasonal cycle of temperatures, adding another global trend that is formally attributed to human emissions of greenhouse gases.

The House on Thursday easily approved a non-binding but symbolically important resolution condemning a tax on carbon emissions. 

Driving the news: Six Republicans opposed the measure, along with most Democrats. That’s a notable change from two years ago, when Republicans unanimously supported a nearly identical measure.

U.S. crude oil production reached a new milestone — averaging an estimated 11 million barrels per day last week for the first time ever — and the surge will keep going as America has again become a crude powerhouse.

Why it matters: The number, which is from preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration, is a symbolic threshold that underscores the scale of the U.S. oil boom from shale resources.