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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

A close-run general election could see climate policies getting a renewed focus "across the Ditch."

The post “Teal-like” party may call shots in close-run NZ election, halting Aotearoa’s “staggering” retreat on climate action appeared first on Renew Economy.

CATL ANZ general manager Zane Zhou on the China battery giant's journey from iPods to EVs and big batteries – and where the market is headed. Plus news of the week, with Peter Hannam.

The post Energy Insiders Podcast: CATL’s fast-charge to the top appeared first on Renew Economy.

China's clean tech is helping Australia decarbonise electricity, transport, industry and mining. The challenge is to use it to develop lasting local capability and competitive advantage.

The post Australia can use China’s technology to accelerate its energy transition – and capture more value appeared first on Renew Economy.

Renew Economy denied government funding on basis that reporting on climate and energy issues and misinformation campaigns is not of public interest.

The post Government says climate and energy reporting not “core news” of public interest – as dis-information runs wild appeared first on Renew Economy.

Federal minister reportedly revokes plans to impose hefty new tariffs on imported steel products used in large-scale solar projects, following industry appeal.

The post Federal Labor dumps anti-dumping rule following solar industry warnings of rising costs, delays appeared first on Renew Economy.

Matt Canavan claims Australia's EU free trade agreement is "a sneaky backdoor" to net zero. But his stance has provoked a "please explain" from Coalition colleagues.

The post Canavan “cannot have it both ways” on net zero and free trade – unless he wants Australia out of the Paris accord appeared first on Renew Economy.

Globally sea-surface temperatures have never been recorded so warm for any October, with the monster El Nino a factor.

The post Chart of the Day: Ocean temperatures were warmest on record for October, including in some Australian waters appeared first on Renew Economy.

In a year that has been all about big and small batteries, rooftop solar is shaping up to have its biggest year of growth on record as it rides the wave of the consumer energy revolution.

The post Australia is headed for its biggest year of rooftop solar growth ever – and the mid-scale boom is yet to come appeared first on Renew Economy.

Private landowners in Missouri will make an estimated $16 million in annual lease payments from solar projects, money that helps families hang on to their land when farm revenues fall short.

Frank Marshall is one of them. He told Advanced Power Alliance that income from leasing part of his property to the Kelso solar project in Scott County has helped him keep his property intact.

“It keeps the land in use,” Marshall said. “That was important to us.”

The Kelso project, whose two stages opened in 2025 and last March, will also provide $2 million in annual tax revenue for the county during its 35-year lifespan.

County officials estimate the project will generate $27 million for local schools. That may help build or renovate facilities in a county district where 75 percent of the buildings were constructed at least 25 years ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Marshall’s farm has been in the family’s hands since 1898, when his great-great-great grandfather moved to Southeastern Missouri from Kentucky. Now, the farm is owned by four branches of the family in a structure created by Marshall’s father.

Farming poses many challenges, Marshall said. “We’ve seen corn prices lately that are about where they were in the 1970s. There aren’t many things you can buy today for what they cost fifty years ago. When prices stay low but everything else goes up, it makes it hard to make a profit. And then you’ve got weather, markets, and things happening around the world that you can’t control.”

Selling the land was never an option, he said, and thanks to payments from the Kelso project and Arevon, the developer, the family was able to lease the land and preserve the property.

“When Missouri farmers and landowners have the freedom to use their land to provide for their families and their communities, the entire state benefits,” wrote Jeff Clark, president and CEO of the Advanced Power Alliance, in a March column in The Missouri Times.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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The post Solar generates at least $16 million annually for Missouri landowners appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 5 NOVEMBER 2026

Archive reference: SLF-2007-109

The Sakhalin Papers XCIX: The Shareholding That Survived — Shell’s Bermuda Company, Its Russian LNG Contracts and the Exit That Remained Incomplete

AN INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INVESTIGATION

By the Donovan–Shell Archive

Researched and drafted with assistance from ChatGPT, using authenticated Shell financial statements, original corporate announcements, SEC filings, contemporaneous reporting, historical documents preserved in the Donovan–Shell Archive and publicly accessible regulatory records.

Nearly five years after Shell announced its intention to withdraw from its Russian energy investments, the company’s own financial disclosures reveal a complicated legal inheritance. Shell still reported ownership of 27.5% minus one share in the original Bermuda-registered company that once operated Sakhalin II, even though Russia had transferred the project’s operating rights to a replacement company. One long-term Russian LNG purchase agreement had been declared terminated following non-performance. Another, signed with a Novatek subsidiary in 2015, remained listed in Shell’s 2025 annual report. These are not indications that Shell secretly continued operating Sakhalin II. They demonstrate something more technically significant: withdrawing from an investment, losing control of its operating assets, terminating associated contracts and extinguishing every residual corporate right are different legal and financial events. The authenticated records allow those distinctions to be reconstructed.

Publication date: 5 November 2026

Collection: The Sakhalin Papers — Shell, Gazprom and Russia

Previous instalment: SLF-2007-108 — The Account That Could Not Pay, 4 November 2026

Principal authenticated evidence: Shell’s announcements of 28 February and 8 March 2022; Shell’s 2022, 2023 and 2025 Forms 20-F; Shell’s third-quarter 2026 interim financial report; the original 2015 Novatek LNG contract announcement; Shell’s April 2007 SEC-filed Sakhalin announcement; and contemporaneous Interfax, Reuters and S&P Global reporting.

Evidence standard: Corporate ownership is distinguished from operational participation; accounting carrying value from legal title; the existence of a contract from physical delivery under that contract; and the assertions of parties in a legal dispute from independently established judicial findings.

Introduction: The company that was supposed to have disappeared

The previous instalment examined Russia’s arrangements for disposing of Shell’s unclaimed interest in the replacement Sakhalin II operating company.

The Russian government established a value of 94.8 billion roubles.

It initially approved Novatek as purchaser.

It subsequently replaced Novatek with a Gazprom-controlled company.

And the potential proceeds became entangled in a separate Russian lawsuit involving alleged unpaid gas deliveries.

But a different question remained.

What happened to the company through which Shell had originally held its investment?

The answer appears in Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F, filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission on 12 March 2026.

The relevant disclosure is brief.

Under the heading Russia, Shell states that it still holds a 27.5% minus one share interest in Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.

It identifies that company as a Bermuda entity.

It then says that the entity purportedly no longer possesses the licences, rights and obligations associated with Sakhalin II.

Finally, Shell confirms that it still holds a long-term LNG purchase agreement with a Novatek entity.

These statements appear together in one short passage.

Yet they describe three separate legal and commercial circumstances.

Shell continues to report an ownership interest in the original company.

Russia has transferred the operating project to another company.

And Shell continues to report a separate Russian LNG contractual relationship.

The distinction between these circumstances is the subject of this investigation.

Shell’s operational withdrawal was substantially accomplished. The documentary record nevertheless shows that not every associated corporate or contractual relationship had disappeared.

Primary source: Shell plc — 2025 Form 20-F, Integrated Gas, Russia, page 50. SEC

1. The original Sakhalin company had a long history

Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd, generally known as SEIC, was established in Bermuda.

For decades, it served as the company through which the international shareholders developed and operated Sakhalin II.

The project was governed by a production-sharing agreement concluded in 1994.

Its development involved enormous capital expenditure.

Offshore production platforms had to be constructed.

Oil and gas pipelines crossed Sakhalin Island.

A liquefied natural gas plant was built at Prigorodnoye.

Export facilities were established for international customers.

The legal structure mattered because the investors were financing a major project under contractual arrangements intended to operate over an extended period.

Shell was originally the largest shareholder.

By the beginning of 2006, its interest was approximately 55%.

Mitsui held 25%.

Mitsubishi held 20%.

The subsequent entry of Gazprom fundamentally altered that arrangement.

On 21 December 2006, Shell, Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Gazprom signed a protocol providing for Gazprom to acquire 50% plus one share.

The agreed consideration was $7.45 billion.

The existing shareholders would each reduce their interests by half.

Shell would retain 27.5% minus one share.

Gazprom would become the majority shareholder.

But the original Bermuda company would remain the project operator.

That final point is important.

The 2006 transaction changed the ownership of the company.

It did not replace the company itself with an entirely different legal entity.

The original arrangements were implemented through a share-sale agreement signed on 18 April 2007.

Shell’s contemporaneous announcement was filed with the SEC.

It confirmed that Shell would continue contributing technical expertise to Sakhalin II.

The company therefore retained a substantial commercial and managerial role after relinquishing majority ownership.

Authenticated source: Shell’s SEC Filing — Gazprom Enters Sakhalin II, 18 April 2007.

Historical archive: Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi Sign Sakhalin II Protocol, 21 December 2006. SEC

2. February 2022: Shell announces its intention to leave

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 created a fundamentally different political environment.

Four days later, Shell announced its intention to withdraw from its partnerships with Gazprom and related entities.

The announcement specifically identified Sakhalin II.

Shell also referred to Salym Petroleum Development, the Gydan venture and its involvement in financing Nord Stream 2.

Then-chief executive Ben van Beurden condemned Russia’s invasion.

The company’s board stated that it intended to exit the identified investments.

The language was significant.

Shell announced an intention to withdraw.

It did not claim that every contractual and corporate step necessary to complete that withdrawal had already occurred.

The company acknowledged that detailed business implications would have to be examined, including compliance with applicable sanctions.

On 8 March 2022, Shell broadened its announcement.

It said that it intended to withdraw from involvement in all Russian hydrocarbons.

That included crude oil, petroleum products, gas and LNG.

But Shell included an important qualification.

The withdrawal would proceed in a phased manner.

Its immediate actions included ending spot purchases of Russian crude.

Other arrangements would require separate decisions and implementation.

The distinction was evident from the beginning.

An announced corporate policy was not itself a legal instrument automatically terminating every investment, shareholding and commercial agreement.

Primary sources:

Shell — Intention to Exit Gazprom Partnerships, 28 February 2022.

Shell — Intention to Withdraw from Russian Oil and Gas, 8 March 2022. GlobeNewswire

3. Shell withdrew its management and technical personnel

The company’s subsequent financial disclosures record the practical consequences of its decision.

Shell’s executive directors resigned from Sakhalin Energy.

Managerial and technical personnel were withdrawn.

Shell concluded that it had lost significant influence over the investment from 1 April 2022.

This had important accounting consequences.

Previously, Shell had treated Sakhalin Energy as an associate.

Under that arrangement, its financial reporting reflected its interest in an enterprise over which it exercised significant influence.

Following the withdrawal of its directors and personnel, that accounting treatment was no longer considered appropriate.

Shell reclassified the investment as a financial asset measured at fair value.

Its financial disclosures also recorded a $1.614 billion impairment against Sakhalin II in the first quarter of 2022.

The impairment reflected the reassessment of the investment following the decision to withdraw.

This was a substantial accounting event.

But it was not a transfer of shares to a purchaser.

Nor was it evidence that the original Bermuda company had been dissolved.

The distinction is fundamental.

Loss of significant influence can change how an investment is accounted for without necessarily extinguishing the legal ownership of the underlying shares.

Shell’s disclosures demonstrate precisely that distinction.

Source: Shell — Second-Quarter 2022 Financial Results and Sakhalin Disclosure. Investegate

4. Russia replaced the operator — not Shell’s original share certificate

On 30 June 2022, President Vladimir Putin signed Presidential Decree No. 416.

The decree established arrangements for replacing the existing Sakhalin II operating company with a new Russian company.

The original operating entity was registered in Bermuda.

The replacement entity would be subject to Russian law.

The decree required the transfer of the project’s operating rights and obligations into the new structure.

Foreign shareholders were given an opportunity to seek equivalent interests.

The Russian authorities would decide whether their applications were approved.

Mitsui and Mitsubishi subsequently accepted the new arrangements.

Shell refused.

On 1 September 2022, it formally notified the Russian authorities that it would not apply for an interest in the replacement company.

It also objected to the purported transfer of the original company’s assets and rights.

And it reserved its legal remedies.

Those events were examined in the previous two instalments.

But the distinction between the companies becomes particularly important here.

The new Russian company was not simply the original Bermuda company operating under a different trading name.

It was a separately established legal entity.

Russia’s decree purported to transfer the project-related rights and obligations into that new entity.

Shell did not accept participation in it.

The company’s original shareholding therefore required separate consideration.

The Russian government subsequently approved arrangements for disposing of the corresponding unclaimed interest in the replacement company.

That did not necessarily amount to a conventional transfer of Shell’s original Bermuda-company shares.

The two companies must not be treated as interchangeable.

Sources: Reuters — Russia Seizes Control of Sakhalin II Project, 1 July 2022; Shell — 2022 Annual Report and Form 20-F. Investing.com

5. The accounting records provide the crucial distinction

Shell’s 2023 Form 20-F contains one of the clearest explanations of what happened.

Note 14, Investments in Securities, identifies the company’s retained interest in Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.

It confirms the accounting treatment before and after 1 April 2022.

Before that date, Shell accounted for the investment as an associate.

After losing significant influence, it accounted for the interest as an equity security measured at fair value.

The filing then records that the investment had a carrying value of zero at 31 December 2022.

It remained zero at 31 December 2023.

This evidence is more precise than saying that Shell simply lost or sold its Sakhalin investment.

The company continued to report ownership of shares.

But those shares no longer had a recognised carrying value in its accounts.

For readers unfamiliar with corporate financial reporting, the distinction may seem unusual.

It is nevertheless important.

An investment can continue to exist as a legal interest even when the reporting company concludes that its fair value is zero.

The accounting treatment reflects the applicable recognition and valuation requirements.

It does not necessarily establish that every potential legal right associated with the shares has been extinguished.

Conversely, retaining legal title to shares does not establish that the shares possess substantial recoverable economic value.

Shell’s Sakhalin disclosure illustrates both principles.

The original shareholding survived in the company’s reported ownership records.

The recognised accounting value did not.

Primary source: Shell — 2023 Form 20-F, Note 14, Investments in Securities, page 259. SEC

6. The 2025 annual report confirms the surviving ownership interest

The most recent detailed annual disclosure provides the next documentary checkpoint.

Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F was filed with the SEC on 12 March 2026.

In its Integrated Gas section, the company again reported its remaining interest in the original Bermuda entity.

It also qualified the status of that entity’s former operating rights.

The wording deserves careful consideration.

Shell says the original company purportedly no longer possesses the licences, rights and obligations relating to Sakhalin II.

That qualification matters.

It preserves the distinction between Russia’s asserted transfer under its domestic measures and the wider legal consequences of that transfer.

It does not establish that Shell continues to possess an enforceable right to operate the project.

Nor does it establish that an international court has determined the Russian measures to be invalid.

It records Shell’s position in a contested restructuring.

There is also an important accounting qualification.

Although the 2025 report confirms the continuing shareholding, the general investments-in-securities note does not provide a separately identified updated carrying value for Sakhalin Energy.

The earlier report specifically recorded a zero carrying value at the end of 2023.

It would therefore be inappropriate to invent a new valuation for 2025.

The verified position is narrower.

Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F confirms that the original shareholding remained in its reported portfolio.

It does not establish that the shareholding had regained commercial value.

Source: Shell plc — 2025 Form 20-F, pages 50 and 259. SEC

7. An independent corporate-identity check raises another distinction

There is an additional, less prominent record concerning the original company.

The Legal Entity Identifier database contains an entry for:

Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.

Its identifier is:

254900UD74QC94TFU508.

The record identifies Bermuda as the company’s legal jurisdiction.

It gives a Bermuda registration reference of 19370.

The record also identifies the company’s legal-entity status as active.

However, the same record shows that its Legal Entity Identifier registration has lapsed.

The last recorded update occurred in December 2022.

These details require careful interpretation.

A lapsed Legal Entity Identifier does not necessarily mean the associated company has been dissolved.

The identifier’s renewal status and the company’s legal existence are separate matters.

Equally, an old legal-entity record should not be treated as definitive proof of the company’s current standing under Bermuda law.

The authoritative source for that question is the Bermuda Registrar of Companies.

A current certified registry extract has not been obtained for this investigation.

Accordingly, Shell’s own 2025 Form 20-F remains the strongest authenticated evidence that the group continued to report an ownership interest in the original entity.

The Legal Entity Identifier record provides useful supporting identification.

It does not independently determine the present legal status of the company or the enforceability of any associated rights.

Sources:

Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd — Legal Entity Identifier Record.

Bermuda Registrar of Companies — Official Corporate Registers. LEI.report

8. The Sakhalin LNG purchase agreement followed a different legal path

The survival of Shell’s original shares must also be distinguished from its contractual rights to purchase LNG.

Shell had a substantial commercial relationship with Sakhalin II.

That relationship included long-term LNG purchase arrangements.

Those contracts were separate from its ownership interest in the operating company.

A shareholder may enter into supply contracts with a company in which it owns shares.

But the legal rights arising under the supply agreement are not identical to the rights arising from share ownership.

This distinction became important after Russia’s restructuring.

In February 2023, Shell reported that it was no longer receiving LNG cargoes due under its long-term agreement with the original Sakhalin Energy company.

Contemporaneous Interfax reporting recorded Shell’s position.

The company said that the transfer of licences, assets, liabilities and personnel to the replacement Russian company meant it was no longer receiving the contracted deliveries.

Shell was considering its legal options.

Its subsequent 2023 annual report went further.

Shell stated that the original Sakhalin Energy company had renounced the long-term LNG purchase contract by failing to perform.

Shell consequently considered the agreement terminated.

That is the company’s contractual position.

It should not be represented as a judicial determination of breach.

The complete underlying supply agreement and any applicable dispute-resolution proceedings have not been independently examined.

Nevertheless, the financial disclosures establish that Shell regarded its Sakhalin LNG purchase agreement as terminated.

The original shareholding remained recorded. The associated Sakhalin LNG purchase agreement did not remain in force on Shell’s stated contractual position.

This is another example of separate legal relationships following different paths.

Contemporaneous source: Interfax — Shell Announces Cessation of Sakhalin LNG Supplies, 2 February 2023.

Authenticated source: Shell — 2023 Form 20-F, Russia Disclosure.

Earlier archive investigation: The Shell Leaks Files — 20 September 2026: The Missing LNG Cargoes. interfax.com

9. The Novatek contract was different again

Shell’s remaining Russian LNG purchase agreement involved Novatek.

The original contract was announced on 4 June 2015.

Novatek’s contemporaneous press release identifies the contractual parties.

The seller was Novatek Gas & Power.

The buyer was Shell International Trading Middle East.

The agreement concerned LNG from the Yamal LNG project.

Its stated annual volume was approximately 900,000 tonnes.

The contractual duration was more than twenty years.

That agreement was not a Sakhalin II ownership arrangement.

Nor was it an agreement for Shell to acquire an interest in the Sakhalin II replacement company.

It concerned the purchase of LNG from a separate Russian Arctic project.

This distinction becomes particularly important because Novatek also appeared in the later Sakhalin ownership dispute.

In April 2023, a Novatek subsidiary was approved as the prospective purchaser of the unclaimed Sakhalin interest.

That proposed acquisition was subsequently superseded by Russia’s approval of a Gazprom-controlled purchaser.

The 2015 Yamal LNG supply agreement and the proposed 2023 Sakhalin acquisition were different commercial matters.

They involved different corporate arrangements.

The existence of one does not establish completion of the other.

The original 2015 supply agreement is authenticated by Novatek’s published corporate announcement.

Primary source: Novatek — Original Announcement of Long-Term LNG Contract with Shell, 4 June 2015. novatek.ru

10. Shell’s remaining contract does not establish continuing deliveries

The Donovan–Shell Archive examined the surviving Novatek agreement in detail on 21 September 2026.

That earlier investigation established that Shell had confirmed continuing receipt of Yamal LNG cargoes in February 2023.

It also traced the agreement through Shell’s subsequent annual reports.

The present investigation does not repeat that earlier contractual history.

Its purpose is to identify what the agreement demonstrates about the legal consequences of Shell’s broader Russian withdrawal.

The crucial distinction is between a contract’s continued existence and its continuing physical performance.

Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F confirms that one long-term LNG purchase agreement with a Novatek entity remained.

But the disclosure does not identify individual cargoes received during 2025.

It does not establish the destinations of any such cargoes.

Nor does it provide contract-specific revenues or profits.

Shell published its third-quarter 2026 financial results on 29 October 2026.

That interim report does not provide a new, separately identified update on the Sakhalin shareholding or the Novatek agreement.

The latest detailed annual disclosure therefore remains the relevant documentary starting point.

It would be inappropriate to infer from the continuing contract disclosure that Shell was necessarily receiving Yamal LNG cargoes in November 2026.

Equally, the absence of cargo information in the annual report is not proof that no deliveries occurred.

These questions require transaction-specific evidence.

Sources:

Shell — Third-Quarter 2026 Interim Financial Report, 29 October 2026.

The Shell Leaks Files — 21 September 2026: The Russian LNG Contract That Survived. SEC

11. The approaching European deadline

A further complication concerns the European Union’s new restrictions on Russian gas imports.

On 26 January 2026, the Council of the European Union formally adopted legislation providing for the phased elimination of Russian pipeline-gas and LNG imports.

The measures entered into force in February 2026.

The regime distinguishes between contracts according to their type, duration and date.

For existing long-term Russian LNG purchase agreements, the general prohibition takes effect on:

1 January 2027.

That deadline is now less than two months away.

Its significance for the Russian LNG industry is substantial.

But the implications for Shell’s Novatek agreement require care.

The European legislation governs specified imports into the European Union.

Shell’s LNG business operates internationally.

Its trading activities involve multiple legal entities, supply locations, delivery destinations and contractual relationships.

The existence of a long-term agreement with a Russian supplier therefore does not, by itself, establish a breach of European sanctions.

Nor does the European import prohibition necessarily terminate every relevant contractual obligation under the law governing the underlying agreement.

The commercial and legal consequences would depend on the particular contract and activities.

The full Shell–Novatek agreement has not been published.

No finding of unlawful conduct is made.

The documentary relevance is that a contractual arrangement signed in 2015 remains listed in Shell’s latest annual report while the regulatory environment governing Russian LNG has changed fundamentally.

Official source: Council of the European Union — Russian Gas Imports: Final Approval of Stepwise Ban, 26 January 2026.

European Commission guidance: REPowerEU — Phase-Out of Russian Energy Imports. Consilium

12. What remains of Shell’s original Sakhalin investment?

The documentary picture can now be reconstructed.

In 2007, Shell retained a substantial interest in the company operating Sakhalin II.

That interest followed a negotiated transaction in which Gazprom acquired majority ownership.

In 2022, Shell announced its intention to withdraw from Russia.

Its directors resigned from Sakhalin Energy.

Its managerial and technical personnel were withdrawn.

The company lost significant influence over the project.

Russia subsequently imposed a new operating structure.

Shell refused to participate.

The Russian government arranged for the corresponding unclaimed interest in the replacement company to be sold.

Shell’s original shareholding nevertheless continued to appear in its corporate disclosures.

The company’s 2023 accounts recorded a zero carrying value.

Its 2025 Form 20-F continued to identify the shareholding.

These statements can all be true simultaneously.

The original shares may remain legally held.

The company issuing those shares may have lost the operating assets that previously gave the investment its commercial significance.

And the original shareholder may continue to dispute aspects of the transaction.

The existence of residual legal rights does not guarantee that they can be exercised successfully.

Nor does it establish that the original project can be recovered.

The important point is that the different legal and financial relationships must be examined individually.

A simple declaration that Shell has left Sakhalin II cannot, by itself, answer every question concerning those relationships.

13. The surviving shareholding is relevant to the Russian litigation

The importance of the original company extends beyond accounting.

On 2 October 2024, the Russian Prosecutor General initiated proceedings involving eight Shell-group entities.

Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F describes the principal claims.

The prosecutor seeks declarations concerning what it characterises as Shell’s unlawful abandonment of support for Sakhalin Energy.

It also seeks approximately €1.5 billion from Shell Energy Europe Limited concerning alleged unpaid gas deliveries in 2022.

And it seeks permission for Gazprom Export to apply approximately 94 billion roubles of purported Sakhalin compensation against part of that alleged debt.

The proceedings remain contested.

No publicly verified final judgment determining the claims has been identified for this investigation.

But the proceedings help explain why the history of the original Sakhalin company remains relevant.

The prosecutor’s case addresses Shell’s withdrawal from the original investment.

It also seeks to connect disputed compensation associated with that withdrawal to another commercial relationship.

This does not establish that the Russian claims are justified.

It does establish that Shell’s departure continued to generate legal disputes after operational participation had ceased.

The distinction is significant.

Corporate disengagement does not necessarily bring an immediate end to contractual disputes, financial claims or disagreements over legal rights.

Shell’s own annual report demonstrates that those questions remained unresolved when the 2025 accounts were published.

Primary source: Shell — 2025 Form 20-F, Note 32: Legal Proceedings and Other Contingencies, page 288. SEC

EDITORIAL COMMENTARY The difference between leaving a project and extinguishing every legal relationship

The central lesson of these documents concerns the complexity of multinational corporate withdrawal.

Public announcements are necessarily concise.

A company says it is leaving a country.

Investors and customers understand the broad commercial intention.

But the corporate structure underlying that announcement may contain decades of legal arrangements.

There may be equity interests in local or offshore companies.

There may be production-sharing agreements.

There may be long-term supply contracts.

There may be outstanding dividends, commercial receivables, financing arrangements and other obligations.

There may also be disputes over whether those rights and obligations have been transferred, terminated or otherwise affected.

The Sakhalin II withdrawal involved several of these complications.

Shell could withdraw its personnel.

It could resign from management.

It could refuse to participate in the new Russian operating company.

But those actions did not automatically determine the legal fate of its original Bermuda shareholding.

Nor did they necessarily terminate every separate Russian LNG agreement.

This is not evidence of a concealed scheme to remain involved in Sakhalin II.

It is evidence of the difference between operational withdrawal and the complete resolution of every associated legal and commercial relationship.

That distinction deserves to be understood by shareholders.

The company survived in the records, but its commercial significance changed

Shell’s continuing disclosure of its original shareholding is intriguing.

However, its meaning should not be exaggerated.

The company reported a zero carrying value for the investment at the end of 2023.

It had lost significant influence.

Russia had established a replacement operator.

Shell had declined to join it.

Those circumstances substantially distinguish the remaining shareholding from Shell’s position before February 2022.

An ownership percentage can remain unchanged while the underlying investment’s circumstances change dramatically.

Before 2022, Shell’s interest was associated with participation in an operating international LNG project.

After the restructuring, the shares remained associated with a company whose former operating rights were subject to a contested transfer.

The continued percentage did not mean continued operational control.

Nor did it necessarily mean continued entitlement to the project’s production.

The financial statements themselves explain that distinction.

The more useful question is therefore not simply whether Shell still owned shares.

It is what rights, if any, remained practically enforceable through those shares.

The public records examined here do not provide a definitive answer.

Why the two Russian LNG contracts followed different paths

The comparison between Sakhalin and Yamal is instructive.

Shell held an equity interest in Sakhalin Energy.

It also held LNG purchasing rights associated with the Sakhalin project.

Separately, Shell had entered into a long-term agreement to buy Yamal LNG from a Novatek entity.

These were different transactions.

The restructuring of Sakhalin II directly affected the original operator and the contracts under which it delivered LNG.

Shell subsequently considered the Sakhalin LNG agreement terminated through non-performance.

The Novatek agreement concerned a different project.

It did not depend upon Shell remaining a Sakhalin shareholder.

Its continued disclosure therefore does not establish that the Sakhalin withdrawal failed.

It establishes that the wider Russian withdrawal involved another contractual relationship that followed a different course.

That distinction should be preserved even when the same corporate name — Novatek — appears elsewhere in the Sakhalin sale chronology.

The shareholder question

Shell shareholders are entitled to distinguish three separate propositions.

The company announced a policy of withdrawing from Russian hydrocarbons.

It undertook substantial steps to implement that policy.

And some associated corporate or contractual relationships continued to appear in its later disclosures.

Those propositions are not inherently contradictory.

But they raise legitimate questions about the continuing treatment of residual interests.

For example, what is the present legal and accounting status of the original Sakhalin shareholding?

Has Shell pursued, or does it intend to pursue, any additional remedies concerning the purported transfer of the operating company’s rights?

What financial or contractual consequences remain associated with the Novatek LNG purchase agreement?

And how will the European Union’s January 2027 restrictions affect any activities involving that agreement?

These are questions for which authenticated documents and properly attributed company responses are preferable to speculation.

No evidence examined for this instalment establishes that Shell concealed the original shareholding or the Novatek contract from shareholders.

Both were disclosed.

The issue is how those disclosures should be interpreted.

The historical irony

There is a further historical contrast.

In December 2006, Shell agreed to surrender control of Sakhalin II.

The company nevertheless retained a substantial interest, continued in management and remained technical adviser.

The original operating company survived.

In 2022, Shell refused to participate in Russia’s replacement structure.

Its management and technical role had already ended.

But the original shares remained in its subsequent financial disclosures.

The two episodes were legally and politically different.

One involved a negotiated acquisition of shares by Gazprom.

The other involved a state-imposed restructuring and a disputed transfer of operating rights.

Yet both demonstrate the importance of understanding the precise legal structure through which an international investment is held.

In 2006, the preservation of the original company helped Shell continue its involvement after losing control.

In 2022, the continued existence of that original shareholding became part of the complicated aftermath of withdrawal.

The same corporate structure appears at both ends of the story.

But its practical significance changed almost completely.

DOCUMENTARY FINDINGS

Established by authenticated corporate records

Shell announced its intention to withdraw from Gazprom partnerships on 28 February 2022.

It broadened that announcement to all Russian hydrocarbons on 8 March 2022, specifying a phased withdrawal.

Its executive directors resigned from Sakhalin Energy, and managerial and technical personnel were withdrawn.

Shell reported losing significant influence over the investment from 1 April 2022.

It subsequently accounted for the remaining interest as an equity security rather than an associate.

Its 2023 Form 20-F recorded a zero carrying value for that interest at 31 December 2022 and 31 December 2023.

Russia established a replacement operating company under Presidential Decree No. 416.

Shell refused to participate in the replacement company and objected to the purported transfer of the original operator’s rights.

Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F continued to identify its 27.5% minus one share interest in the original Bermuda entity.

Shell considered its long-term Sakhalin LNG purchase contract terminated following non-performance.

Shell’s 2025 Form 20-F also continued to identify one long-term LNG purchase agreement with a Novatek entity.

The original Novatek agreement announced in June 2015 concerned Yamal LNG, not Sakhalin II.

The latest detailed annual filing does not identify individual Novatek cargoes received during 2025.

Positions attributed to the parties

Shell disputes the purported transfer of the original Sakhalin company’s rights and has reserved legal remedies.

Shell characterised non-performance under its Sakhalin LNG purchase agreement as contractual renunciation.

Russia established a replacement operating company and arrangements for disposing of unclaimed interests under its domestic legal measures.

The Russian prosecutor alleges unlawful conduct associated with Shell’s withdrawal and seeks monetary and declaratory relief.

These positions are distinguished from independently established judicial findings.

Not established by the documents examined

The surviving Bermuda shareholding does not establish that Shell continues to control Sakhalin II.

It does not establish that Shell has regained the operating rights transferred under the Russian measures.

It does not establish that the original shares currently possess substantial recoverable value.

It has not been established that Shell continues physically receiving Yamal LNG cargoes in November 2026.

The existence of the Novatek contract does not establish a breach of sanctions.

The complete original LNG contract terms have not been independently examined.

No publicly verified final judgment resolving the Russian prosecutor’s claims has been identified.

The precise enforceability of any residual shareholder rights under applicable domestic or international law remains a separate legal question.

PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTARY SOURCES

1. Shell plc — 2025 Form 20-F, filed 12 March 2026

The principal authenticated source for the surviving Sakhalin shareholding, the Novatek LNG purchase agreement and the Russian litigation.

Read Shell’s Original 2025 SEC Filing.

2. Shell plc — 2023 Form 20-F

Provides the detailed explanation of the original Sakhalin shareholding, the loss of significant influence, the financial-asset classification and the zero carrying value.

Read Shell’s 2023 Form 20-F.

3. Shell plc — 2022 Form 20-F

Documents the original withdrawal decisions, impairment, Russian restructuring and continuing LNG purchase arrangements.

Shell’s Original 2022 SEC Filing.

4. Royal Dutch Shell plc — SEC Filing, 18 April 2007

The original corporate announcement documenting the completion of Gazprom’s acquisition of 50% plus one share of Sakhalin Energy.

Read the Original 2007 SEC Filing.

5. Shell plc — Withdrawal Announcement, 28 February 2022

The board’s announcement of its intention to exit Gazprom partnerships, including Sakhalin II.

Shell’s Original Withdrawal Announcement.

6. Shell plc — Russian Hydrocarbons Withdrawal Announcement, 8 March 2022

The company’s broader statement concerning a phased withdrawal from Russian hydrocarbons.

Shell’s 8 March 2022 Announcement.

7. Novatek — Original LNG Contract Announcement, 4 June 2015

Identifies the contracting parties, Yamal LNG source, approximate annual quantity and contractual duration.

Novatek’s Original Press Release — PDF.

8. Interfax — 2 February 2023

Contemporaneous reporting of the cessation of LNG supplies under the original Sakhalin purchase agreement.

Shell Announces Cessation of Sakhalin LNG Supplies.

9. Shell plc — Third-Quarter 2026 Interim Report

Published on 29 October 2026. Reviewed for any subsequent separately identified update concerning the Sakhalin shareholding and Novatek agreement.

Shell’s Third-Quarter 2026 SEC Filing.

10. Council of the European Union — 26 January 2026

The official announcement concerning the adopted regulation phasing out Russian LNG and pipeline-gas imports.

Council Approves Russian Gas Import Phase-Out.

11. Bermuda Corporate Identification Records

The Legal Entity Identifier entry provides supporting identification of the original company. The Bermuda Registrar remains the authoritative source for current corporate status.

Sakhalin Energy Investment Company — Legal Entity Identifier.

Bermuda Registrar of Companies.

12. Donovan–Shell Archive — Earlier Investigations

The following investigations provide the detailed historical and contractual background rather than repeating it here.

20 September 2026 — The Missing LNG Cargoes.

21 September 2026 — The Russian LNG Contract That Survived.

4 November 2026 — The Account That Could Not Pay.

DOCUMENTARY DISCLAIMER

This investigation is based upon authenticated Shell corporate announcements, annual financial statements filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, original corporate records issued by Novatek, contemporaneous Interfax and Reuters reporting, publicly available regulatory information and historical documents preserved in the Donovan–Shell Archive.

The original Bermuda-registered Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd is distinguished from the Russian replacement operating company established in 2022.

Shell’s retained ownership interest in the original Bermuda entity is not represented as evidence of continuing operational control over Sakhalin II.

The historical accounting classification of the original investment is distinguished from its continuing legal ownership.

The zero carrying value recorded in Shell’s 2023 annual report is not represented as proof that every potentially enforceable legal right had been extinguished.

Nor is the continuing legal ownership of shares represented as proof that they possess substantial recoverable economic value.

The Legal Entity Identifier record is used for identification and not as conclusive evidence of current corporate standing under Bermuda law.

A current certified extract from the Bermuda Registrar of Companies has not been obtained.

Shell’s characterisation of the termination of its Sakhalin LNG purchase agreement is attributed to the company.

It is not presented as an independent judicial determination of contractual breach.

The original Shell–Novatek LNG purchase agreement has not been independently obtained in full.

The agreement’s existence is distinguished from proof of continuing physical deliveries.

No allegation is made that Shell violated European Union, British or other applicable sanctions.

References to the European Union’s January 2027 Russian LNG import prohibition do not establish that the Novatek contract itself is necessarily unlawful or automatically terminated.

The Russian prosecutor’s allegations are identified as contested claims.

No publicly verified final judgment establishing liability concerning those claims has been identified.

The investigation does not establish that Shell concealed its surviving Sakhalin shareholding or the Novatek agreement from shareholders. Both were disclosed in its regulatory filings.

Editorial analysis is identified separately from authenticated documentary findings.

Relevant corrections, additional original documents and responses from Shell, Gazprom, Novatek, the former Sakhalin Energy shareholders and other interested parties are welcome.

The website’s general disclaimer also applies.

NEXT IN THE SHELL LEAKS FILES SLF-2007-110 — THE SAKHALIN PAPERS C The Hundredth File: Two Kremlin Interventions, One Shell Investment — What Twenty Years of Documents Actually Prove

The next instalment marks a significant milestone.

The 100th investigation in The Sakhalin Papers.

The documentary sequence has followed Sakhalin II through construction difficulties, environmental controversies, leaked internal correspondence, regulatory pressure, the Kremlin negotiations of December 2006, Gazprom’s acquisition of control, the project’s subsequent operation and the extraordinary events following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The hundredth instalment will examine two moments that fundamentally changed Shell’s position.

21 December 2006.

Shell and its Japanese partners agreed that Gazprom would acquire a controlling interest in Sakhalin Energy for $7.45 billion.

The original operating company survived.

Shell remained a substantial shareholder and technical participant.

30 June 2022.

President Putin signed a decree establishing a replacement Russian operating company.

Shell subsequently refused to participate.

The operating rights were transferred under the Russian measures.

Compensation became disputed.

And the original Bermuda shareholding remained in Shell’s later financial disclosures.

The comparison raises important questions.

How did the 2006 negotiated transaction differ from the 2022 state-imposed restructuring?

What powers did Russia possess under the production-sharing agreement?

What did Shell’s own internal documents reveal about the company’s assessment of the earlier regulatory confrontation?

Which claims made by Russian officials were supported by contemporaneous evidence?

Which remained contested?

What role did environmental enforcement play in the 2006 negotiations?

And what can legitimately be concluded about the relationship between political power, corporate ownership and investment protection?

The investigation will return to the authenticated Shell internal correspondence, the original Kremlin statements, contemporary reporting, production-sharing documents and corporate financial records.

It will distinguish regulatory enforcement from political inference, a negotiated sale from a disputed transfer, and historical coincidence from demonstrable causation.

The purpose will not be to suggest that every accusation against Shell was justified.

Nor will it assume that every action taken by the Russian authorities was legally legitimate.

Instead, it will examine what the surviving documents establish about two extraordinary interventions affecting the same international investment.

There is also a wider question.

What does the Sakhalin II experience reveal about the risks facing international energy companies when contractual rights, national energy policy and geopolitical power collide?

After 100 investigations, the Donovan–Shell Archive possesses an unusually extensive documentary record from which to address that question.

The evidence includes records created before either crisis, material generated during the negotiations and corporate disclosures describing the consequences many years later.

Those sources deserve to be examined together.

The hundredth instalment will therefore be both a major documentary investigation and an evidential audit of the Sakhalin story so far.

Not every suspicion will survive that examination.

Not every accusation will be substantiated.

But the established facts are remarkable enough without exaggeration.

The Sakhalin Papers continue.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES — 5 NOVEMBER 2026 was first posted on November 5, 2026 at 11:03 pm.
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AN INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INVESTIGATION

By the Donovan–Shell Archive

5 November 2026

Researched and drafted with assistance from ChatGPT, using authenticated corporate statements, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development project disclosures, European Union regulatory documents and contemporaneous reporting.

Shell has signed an agreement giving it exclusive rights to purchase substantial quantities of sustainable aviation fuel from a proposed Moroccan refinery. The announcement supports the company’s ambition to become a major supplier of lower-carbon aviation fuels. But an examination of previously published development-bank records reveals a more complicated picture. The $239 million facility is not yet operating. Its proposed financing remains under review, environmental assessments are continuing, and its planned start-up is almost two years away. The agreement also comes just fourteen months after Shell abandoned construction of its own much larger biofuels plant in Rotterdam. Together, the documents reveal an important evolution in Shell’s lower-carbon strategy: securing future supplies through commercial agreements while other companies develop and finance the production facilities.

Introduction: The agreement behind the announcement

On 2 November 2026, Shell announced a long-term agreement to purchase sustainable aviation fuel from a proposed production facility in Morocco.

The agreement involves Shell Trading Rotterdam B.V., a subsidiary of Shell plc, and Green Sky Manara LLC, part of the Green Sky Capital group.

The proposed facility will be located at Port Nador, within the Nador West Med industrial and logistics development on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.

Shell will hold exclusive purchasing rights covering approximately 150,000 tonnes annually of sustainable aviation fuel, commonly known as SAF, or an equivalent volume of hydrotreated vegetable oil used as renewable diesel.

The agreement also covers associated products, including bionaphtha and biopropane.

The plant is expected to begin operations in October 2028.

Shell Aviation confirmed these arrangements in its official corporate communications.

The company described the agreement as another step towards building international supply chains for lower-carbon aviation fuels.

For Shell, it represents access to potential future production without announcing construction of a new refinery of its own.

For Morocco, the project offers the prospect of developing a new export industry associated with aviation’s energy transition.

But the announcement requires careful interpretation.

Shell has secured contractual purchasing rights to future production. It has not announced that the facility is completed, that production has begun or that all financing arrangements have been finalised.

That distinction becomes particularly important when examining the project’s underlying financial documents.

Primary source: Shell Aviation — Official Corporate Announcement, November 2026.

Contemporaneous report: Morocco World News — Shell Secures Long-Term Supply Deal for Green Fuel Project at Nador West Med, 2 November 2026. LinkedIn

1. The development bank’s records tell a larger story

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has published a project summary containing substantial additional information.

The project is identified as:

SAF Project Manara Morocco

EBRD Project No. 57785

The record was first disclosed on 14 October 2026 and last updated on 29 October 2026.

It identifies the proposed project’s total cost as:

US$239 million.

The bank describes a facility capable of producing up to 200,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel annually.

That figure is higher than the approximately 150,000 tonnes referred to in Shell’s purchasing agreement.

The difference does not necessarily indicate an inconsistency.

A plant may have a stated maximum production capacity while its principal customer contracts for a different annual quantity.

Furthermore, the facilities are designed to produce several types of renewable fuel, so the eventual product mix could affect the quantities available.

What matters is that the figures describe different aspects of the proposed development.

The 200,000-tonne figure is the bank’s stated design capacity.

The approximately 150,000-tonne figure concerns Shell’s announced purchasing rights.

Neither establishes actual production.

The bank also provides information about the proposed project’s financing, ownership, technology, employment arrangements and environmental assessment.

These details make the record particularly valuable.

They allow the announcement to be examined as an industrial development rather than merely as an expression of corporate environmental ambition.

Primary source: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — SAF Project Manara Morocco, Project No. 57785. EBRD

2. Up to $135 million in proposed development-bank lending

The EBRD describes a proposed senior secured loan of up to $135 million.

The contemplated financing comprises two elements.

The first is an $85 million tranche described in the proposed loan structure as committed.

The second is a further $50 million uncommitted tranche.

Together, these represent a potential financing package of $135 million.

There is an important distinction between the terminology used to describe the proposed loan structure and the project’s present financing status.

The EBRD’s project record continues to classify the transaction as exploratory and pending concept review.

It would therefore be incorrect to describe the entire $135 million as a completed, approved and disbursed loan.

The bank’s financial summary separately identifies $85 million.

That figure corresponds to the proposed initial tranche.

The additional $50 million remains uncommitted within the financing structure.

The project record identifies 2 December 2026 as the anticipated approval date.

As of 5 November 2026, that date remains in the future.

The proposed financing has therefore not reached the final approval milestone indicated in the bank’s published timetable.

This is a crucial qualification.

A reader encountering Shell’s announcement might reasonably assume the project had already secured everything necessary to begin construction.

The development-bank documentation establishes that important financial and environmental processes remain underway.

The public record does not establish that the financing will be refused.

But neither does it establish that approval is guaranteed.

The bank’s final decision, financing conditions and subsequent construction timetable remain significant matters.

Source: EBRD — Project Status, Proposed Loan Structure and Approval Timetable. EBRD

3. European and international climate-finance support

The proposed financing arrangements contain another important feature.

They involve potential support from international climate-finance mechanisms.

The EBRD states that up to $20 million of the proposed loan amount is expected to be funded through the Green Climate Fund.

This would operate under the High Impact Programme for the Corporate Sector.

The programme is intended to support industrial decarbonisation and encourage investment in projects that might otherwise struggle to obtain commercially acceptable financing.

The EBRD also anticipates that the project will benefit from a first-loss risk-cover arrangement provided through the European Union’s EFSD+ guarantee framework.

Such arrangements can help financial institutions participate in investments that carry risks associated with new industries, markets or technologies.

They may reduce the exposure of lenders to certain potential losses.

But the structure requires careful description.

A proposed guarantee is not necessarily a direct cash grant to the project developer.

Likewise, concessional financing does not mean the entire investment is being paid for through public funds.

The EBRD’s documentation describes a proposed combination of commercial project finance, concessional climate funding and risk-sharing arrangements.

The precise financial terms and ultimate exposure of participating institutions are not fully disclosed in the material examined.

It would therefore be inappropriate to assign an invented monetary value to the proposed EU guarantee.

It would also be incorrect to suggest that Shell itself has received $135 million in financing.

The EBRD’s proposed borrower is associated with Green Sky Capital, not Shell plc.

Nevertheless, the arrangement raises an important question about the financing of the energy transition.

If the project succeeds, Shell could gain access to substantial quantities of lower-carbon fuels produced by a separately financed industrial facility.

The economic risks of constructing that facility would principally arise within the project and its financing arrangements, rather than through an announced Shell-owned refinery investment.

That distinction matters when assessing the relationship between commercial returns, public climate finance and the risks of developing new industrial capacity.

Source: EBRD — Project Finance, Additionality and Proposed Climate-Finance Support. EBRD

4. Who is developing the plant?

The development-bank records identify Green Sky Capital Manara Ltd in connection with the proposed financing.

The EBRD describes Green Sky Capital as a developer of sustainable aviation fuel projects across emerging markets.

It identifies the group’s financial backers as:

Green Sky Capital Management, Al Mana Holding and Vision Invest.

Shell’s agreement identifies Green Sky Manara LLC as its contractual counterparty.

The corporate names appearing in the two records should not automatically be treated as interchangeable legal entities.

The complete ownership and contractual structure has not been independently reconstructed from original corporate registry documents.

What the publicly available documents establish is that the project is being developed within the Green Sky Capital group.

They do not identify Shell as the owner of the proposed Moroccan production facility.

Nor has Shell announced that it is financing construction through an equity investment equivalent to the total project cost.

Instead, Shell’s disclosed role concerns future purchasing rights.

This is commercially significant.

It illustrates a supply-chain model under which energy traders can obtain future product volumes through agreements with independently developed production facilities.

The developer bears responsibility for arranging construction and financing, subject to the detailed contractual arrangements.

The purchaser gains access to supply if the project reaches commercial operation and performs as agreed.

The arrangement can benefit both parties.

But the full risk allocation depends upon contract terms that have not been publicly disclosed.

There is no basis for assuming that Shell has guaranteed completion of the plant or every obligation owed by the project developer.

5. Why the project needs a long-term customer

One of the most revealing statements in the EBRD disclosure concerns the importance of the purchasing agreement.

The bank explains that the project is supported by a long-term offtake arrangement with a private-sector counterparty.

Such agreements can be important when financing large industrial facilities.

A developer seeking project finance must demonstrate that the proposed output is likely to generate sufficient revenue to support the business.

Lenders need to consider projected sales, operating costs, construction risks and the borrower’s ability to service debt.

A long-term purchaser can improve confidence in future demand.

That does not necessarily mean the purchaser guarantees a particular price or volume under every circumstance.

Those details depend on the agreement.

But the commercial principle is clear.

A credible customer can make a proposed industrial investment easier to finance.

In this case, Shell is a major international energy trader with extensive aviation-fuel distribution capabilities.

Its agreement may therefore strengthen the commercial case for the Moroccan project.

That interpretation is consistent with the EBRD’s description of the importance of the project’s offtake arrangements.

However, the full contract has not been published.

It is not possible to establish independently whether it contains minimum-purchase obligations, price-indexation mechanisms, termination rights or financial guarantees.

Those details should not be invented.

The authenticated finding is that Shell has announced purchasing rights and the development bank regards a long-term offtake arrangement as an important feature of the proposed financing structure.

6. A striking comparison with Shell’s abandoned Rotterdam plant

The Moroccan announcement acquires additional significance when placed beside Shell’s own recent biofuels history.

On 3 September 2025, Shell announced that it would not restart construction of its planned biofuels facility in Rotterdam.

The project had been intended to produce approximately 820,000 tonnes of biofuels annually.

Its proposed output included sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel.

Shell had taken the final investment decision in 2021.

Construction began in 2022.

But work was subsequently suspended.

Following a commercial and technical review, Shell concluded that the project was insufficiently competitive.

It abandoned the development.

The decision represented a substantial reversal of an earlier investment commitment.

Shell explained that market conditions and projected completion costs had undermined the project’s commercial attractiveness.

The company nevertheless maintained that lower-carbon fuels remained important to its strategy.

It also emphasised that Shell had become a major trader and supplier of sustainable aviation fuel.

One disclosure was especially revealing.

Shell stated that in 2024 it had sold approximately ten times as much lower-carbon fuel as it produced.

That ratio illustrates a substantial difference between the company’s trading activities and its direct manufacturing operations.

Shell could remain a major supplier of lower-carbon fuels without producing all those fuels in facilities it owned.

The Moroccan agreement provides a new example of that distinction.

Shell abandoned a large production investment in Rotterdam but continues to secure future fuel supplies through agreements with other producers.

This does not prove that the Moroccan project will be more commercially successful.

Nor does it establish that Shell abandoned manufacturing merely to transfer environmental or financial risks to other parties.

It establishes a shift in the type of commercial exposure associated with these particular projects.

The Rotterdam development would have been a major Shell production facility.

The Moroccan project is being developed by another corporate group, with Shell positioned as a prospective purchaser.

The distinction is fundamental to understanding Shell’s present strategy.

Primary source: Shell — Decision Not to Restart Rotterdam Biofuels Plant, 3 September 2025.

Archive reference: Donovan–Shell Archive — Rotterdam Biofuels Construction Pause, 2 July 2024. Shell

7. The technology: Converting waste oils into aviation fuel

The Moroccan facility is intended to use a technology known as hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids, or HEFA.

This is one of the more commercially established methods of producing sustainable aviation fuel.

The process converts suitable oils and fats into hydrocarbon fuels through industrial treatment.

The EBRD identifies Axens’ licensed Vegan technology as the proposed production process.

The planned facility includes feedstock pretreatment, processing equipment, a hydrogen-production unit and storage infrastructure.

The intended raw materials include waste oils, greases and fats.

These can include used cooking oil and other suitable residual materials.

The project also provides for the production of renewable diesel, bionaphtha and biopropane.

That flexibility may be commercially advantageous because different products can serve different markets.

But it also means the advertised maximum SAF production figure should not be treated as a guarantee that the plant will always produce that quantity of aviation fuel.

The actual product mix will depend on operating decisions, technical capabilities, feedstock availability and market conditions.

There is another important distinction.

HEFA is not the same as synthetic aviation fuel manufactured from renewable hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide.

The proposed Moroccan facility is based on processing oils and fats.

The existence of a hydrogen-production unit in its design does not, by itself, establish that the hydrogen will be generated exclusively from renewable electricity.

The carbon intensity of the finished fuel will depend on the complete production pathway.

That includes the origin of the feedstocks, their transportation, processing inputs and the eventual use of the fuel.

These questions are directly relevant to sustainability certification.

8. Where will the raw materials come from?

The EBRD documentation identifies an important supply-chain challenge.

The plant is expected to obtain waste oils and residual fats through a collection network across Morocco.

The project also anticipates importing feedstocks when domestic supplies are insufficient.

This is commercially understandable.

A large refinery requires substantial quantities of raw materials.

If local supplies cannot meet demand consistently, imports may be necessary.

But the arrangement raises questions that deserve scrutiny.

Where will imported feedstocks originate?

How will suppliers demonstrate that materials classified as waste genuinely meet the relevant requirements?

What certification and traceability procedures will apply?

How will the project verify sustainability claims throughout the supply chain?

These are legitimate questions, not allegations of misconduct.

The documents examined do not establish that Green Sky Capital or Shell has purchased improperly classified waste materials.

Nor is there evidence that either company has falsified sustainability certificates.

Nevertheless, the feedstock question is central to the environmental credibility of the proposed plant.

Used cooking oil and other eligible waste materials can offer emissions advantages compared with fossil-derived fuels.

But lifecycle performance depends upon the precise production circumstances.

It is also important to distinguish waste-derived fuels from fuels produced using newly cultivated vegetable oils.

The sustainability treatment of different feedstocks can vary substantially.

The European Union has established detailed rules governing eligible aviation fuels and sustainability requirements.

The European Commission also operates the Union Database for Biofuels, intended to improve traceability of renewable-fuel transactions and associated sustainability information.

Those requirements matter because the Moroccan plant is expected to supply products into international markets where compliance documentation is commercially essential.

Sources:

EBRD — Environmental and Social Assessment of SAF Project Manara.

European Commission — Union Database for Biofuels. EBRD

9. Environmental assessment is still underway

The EBRD classifies the proposed development as an environmental Category B project.

That classification reflects the bank’s assessment framework.

It does not mean the facility has no environmental impacts.

Nor should it be confused with final approval of every environmental management measure.

The EBRD states that environmental and social due diligence remains underway.

A Moroccan environmental impact assessment is required.

The project developer has appointed consultants to undertake the necessary assessment work.

The bank identifies several matters under examination.

These include air emissions, noise, transport activity, cumulative impacts and stakeholder engagement.

The proposed industrial facility will also require appropriate wastewater management, fire protection, emergency response systems and process-safety measures.

The EBRD states that the project’s environmental and social documentation will be updated as the assessment progresses.

This is important because the facility involves substantial industrial processing.

Although its intended products are associated with emissions reduction, the refinery itself will consume energy and process chemical materials.

Its construction and operation will create environmental and safety obligations.

The bank’s assessment process is intended to examine those consequences.

The project record also states that no resettlement or impacts on sensitive biodiversity receptors are expected.

Those are the bank’s current assessment expectations.

They should not be represented as independently verified findings that all environmental impacts have been eliminated.

The relevant studies and regulatory processes are still progressing.

Source: EBRD — Environmental and Social Due Diligence, Project No. 57785. EBRD

10. Why the European market matters

The proposed facility is being developed during a significant change in the regulation of aviation fuels.

The European Union’s ReFuelEU Aviation regulation requires suppliers at covered EU airports to progressively increase the proportion of sustainable aviation fuel in their supplies.

The minimum share began at 2% in 2025.

It increases to 6% in 2030.

The requirements rise further in subsequent decades.

A separate obligation concerning synthetic aviation fuels begins in 2030.

These measures are intended to create demand for lower-carbon aviation fuels.

They also create commercial opportunities for producers capable of supplying certified products.

The Moroccan project may therefore benefit from proximity to European markets and access to Mediterranean transport infrastructure.

Shell’s trading and aviation-fuel distribution businesses provide potential routes through which such products could reach international customers.

However, the announced agreement does not identify the final destinations of all future cargoes.

It would therefore be inappropriate to claim that the entire Moroccan output is already committed to a particular European airport or national market.

Nor does a planned HEFA facility automatically satisfy the separate European requirement for synthetic aviation fuels.

The distinction between eligible bio-based SAF and synthetic aviation fuels is important.

The European regulation creates demand for both categories under different provisions.

Shell’s Moroccan agreement concerns the HEFA pathway.

It should not be characterised as a synthetic e-fuel project.

Official source: European Commission — ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation and Fuel Requirements. Mobility and Transport

11. A second Green Sky project in Egypt

The Moroccan agreement is not an isolated arrangement.

Shell Aviation has confirmed that it follows an earlier agreement involving Green Sky Capital’s proposed facility in Egypt.

That development is expected to produce up to approximately 145,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel annually.

Its planned start-up is towards the end of 2027.

The projects therefore form part of a developing network of proposed production facilities supplying Shell’s international trading business.

Shell has also identified purchasing arrangements associated with facilities in Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand and the United States.

The strategy is geographically diversified.

It potentially enables Shell to build relationships with suppliers across several markets.

But announcements concerning future facilities require careful interpretation.

A planned production capacity is not the same as actual production.

An agreed purchasing arrangement is not the same as a delivered cargo.

And a projected start-up date is not a guarantee that construction, commissioning and commercial operations will proceed exactly as scheduled.

The Moroccan and Egyptian facilities may eventually become important sources of supply.

Their combined potential should not be described as an established quantity of fuel already reaching customers.

The commercial significance lies in Shell’s attempt to secure future availability.

Whether that future supply materialises will depend upon project execution.

Source: Shell Aviation — Morocco and Egypt SAF Supply Arrangements. LinkedIn

EDITORIAL ANALYSIS Shell is increasingly distinguishing the fuel business from the refinery business

The most interesting feature of this development is not simply the quantity of sustainable aviation fuel involved.

It is the commercial structure.

Shell has spent decades developing, owning and operating energy-production infrastructure.

It remains a major operator of oil, gas and LNG facilities.

But in lower-carbon fuels, its recent disclosures demonstrate the importance of another business model.

Shell can act as a trader, distributor and long-term purchaser without necessarily owning every production facility supplying its customers.

The Rotterdam cancellation and Moroccan agreement illustrate that distinction.

At Rotterdam, Shell faced the capital expenditure and commercial challenges associated with constructing a major refinery.

In Morocco, another developer is pursuing construction of a facility whose future output Shell has agreed to purchase.

That does not make the Moroccan arrangement risk-free for Shell.

Long-term purchasing agreements can involve financial commitments, market exposure and delivery risks.

The complete terms are not public.

Nevertheless, Shell’s disclosed role is different from that of the project developer.

The distinction may be commercially attractive.

Shell can use its international customer relationships and trading infrastructure to secure access to fuel produced by other companies.

The developers, meanwhile, can use long-term purchasing arrangements to support their efforts to obtain financing.

This is a recognisable commercial structure.

It is not inherently improper.

But it raises legitimate questions about where the financial and environmental responsibilities associated with the energy transition ultimately reside.

Public finance and private commercial benefits

The proposed EBRD financing adds another dimension.

The project is intended to support aviation decarbonisation.

It may create jobs, develop industrial skills and establish new renewable-fuel production capacity in Morocco.

Those are legitimate development objectives.

The EBRD’s involvement is consistent with its mandate to support commercially viable projects that also deliver wider economic and environmental benefits.

But the public-interest dimension deserves scrutiny.

The project anticipates potential concessional climate finance and European risk-sharing support.

At the same time, Shell has secured exclusive purchasing rights to a substantial part of the proposed production.

Those arrangements may be mutually beneficial.

They do not, by themselves, establish that Shell is improperly receiving a public subsidy.

There is no evidence in the material examined of unlawful preferential treatment.

However, the structure illustrates how climate-finance institutions and private energy companies can become commercially connected through investment in new supply chains.

The development bank may help finance the industrial facility.

The developer produces the fuel.

Shell purchases and markets the product.

Airlines and other customers ultimately pay for its use.

The environmental benefit, if realised, depends upon the production pathway and displacement of conventional fossil-derived fuels.

Understanding those relationships is important when assessing claims about the energy transition.

The carbon claims must remain conditional

Sustainable aviation fuel can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over its lifecycle compared with conventional jet fuel.

But it does not eliminate combustion emissions.

Nor does every production pathway achieve the same reduction.

The proposed Moroccan project’s environmental performance will depend on actual feedstocks, energy inputs, processing methods and transport arrangements.

The relevant certification requirements are intended to address those factors.

Until the plant is operating and its fuel is being independently certified, its projected environmental benefits remain prospective.

There is a further distinction between regulatory eligibility and actual climate performance.

A fuel may qualify under a particular regulatory scheme while still having a non-zero lifecycle carbon footprint.

Claims about emissions savings must therefore be evaluated against the applicable methodology and actual production evidence.

The EBRD’s classification of the proposed investment as green finance is significant.

But it should not be confused with an independently verified calculation of emissions savings from fuel that has not yet been produced.

A revealing contrast in Shell’s capital allocation

The Moroccan announcement also belongs within Shell’s wider portfolio strategy.

Shell has been reducing or disposing of certain lower-carbon investments while continuing substantial commitments to oil and gas.

Recent examples include its withdrawal from the Rotterdam biofuels project and the disposal of other renewable-energy interests.

At the same time, Shell has continued expanding its LNG portfolio.

Its major investments in Canada illustrate the continuing importance of natural gas to its future business.

Those developments should not be treated as identical.

A refinery investment, an LNG expansion and a long-term SAF purchasing agreement have different commercial purposes and financial characteristics.

Nevertheless, taken together, they illustrate how Shell allocates capital among competing opportunities.

The company may decide that owning a particular production facility does not offer satisfactory returns.

It may nevertheless consider the products from that type of facility commercially attractive to trade.

That is an important distinction.

Shell can remain a major supplier of lower-carbon fuels while becoming more selective about where it commits capital to produce them.

The Moroccan agreement provides fresh evidence of that approach.

What should shareholders and regulators watch next?

The decisive issue is whether the proposed Moroccan facility advances from commercial announcements and preliminary financing arrangements to actual industrial production.

The next documentary checkpoints are identifiable.

The EBRD currently lists 2 December 2026 as the anticipated approval date for its proposed financing.

Environmental and social assessments remain in progress.

The project developer must secure the necessary financing and approvals.

Construction, commissioning and supply-chain arrangements must then proceed.

The plant is scheduled to begin operations in October 2028.

Each milestone will provide further evidence.

The approved financing terms, if disclosed, may clarify the distribution of commercial risk.

Completed environmental assessments may provide better information about the project’s likely impacts.

Feedstock sourcing and certification arrangements may demonstrate how sustainability requirements will be implemented.

And actual production and delivery records will eventually reveal whether the announced purchasing volumes become commercial reality.

Until then, the correct description is a proposed industrial development supported by an announced long-term purchasing agreement.

That is significant.

But it is not the same as an operating refinery supplying 150,000 tonnes of certified aviation fuel every year.

CONCLUSION: A NEW SUPPLY STRATEGY, NOT YET A NEW SUPPLY

Shell’s Moroccan agreement is commercially significant because it connects a major international energy trader with a proposed new renewable-fuels industry in North Africa.

The underlying project has a stated cost of $239 million.

The development bank is considering substantial financing support.

European climate-finance mechanisms may also play a role.

Shell has announced exclusive purchasing rights covering substantial potential annual production.

And the project could contribute to the growing supply of sustainable aviation fuel if it is successfully developed.

But the documents also establish important limitations.

The facility is still proposed.

The bank’s financing process remains incomplete.

Environmental assessments are continuing.

And the expected start-up date is almost two years away.

The agreement therefore represents a commercial commitment to potential future production rather than an announcement of completed industrial capacity.

Its importance becomes clearer when compared with Rotterdam.

Shell abandoned construction of a much larger biofuels facility in the Netherlands after concluding that the investment was commercially unattractive.

It is now securing future fuel supplies from projects developed by other companies.

That does not mean Shell has abandoned the lower-carbon fuels business.

It means the company is distinguishing between producing those fuels and buying them for resale.

For Shell shareholders, the commercial attraction is understandable.

For development banks, the potential benefits concern industrial development and emissions reduction.

For environmental observers, the principal questions concern feedstock sustainability, lifecycle emissions and the credibility of future production claims.

All three perspectives deserve consideration.

The evidence supports a clear conclusion.

Shell has secured a potentially valuable future supply relationship in Morocco. Whether the underlying project delivers the promised fuel, financial returns and environmental benefits remains to be demonstrated.

That distinction is more informative than either uncritical enthusiasm or unsupported accusations.

DOCUMENTARY FINDINGS Established by authenticated documents

Shell Aviation announced a long-term offtake agreement with Green Sky Manara LLC in November 2026.

The agreement covers approximately 150,000 tonnes annually of sustainable aviation fuel or an equivalent volume of renewable diesel, together with associated renewable products.

The proposed facility is scheduled to begin operations in October 2028.

The EBRD identifies the underlying development as SAF Project Manara Morocco, Project No. 57785.

Its published project cost is $239 million.

The stated design capacity is up to 200,000 tonnes annually.

The EBRD describes a proposed financing arrangement of up to $135 million, including an $85 million tranche and a further $50 million uncommitted tranche.

The bank’s project record remains classified as exploratory and pending concept review.

Its listed approval date is 2 December 2026.

Environmental and social assessments remain underway.

The project contemplates the use of waste oils and residual fats, including imported feedstocks where necessary.

Shell cancelled its planned Rotterdam biofuels facility in September 2025.

The company’s own announcement confirmed that trading and supplying lower-carbon fuels remained part of its business strategy.

Corporate expectations and projections

The proposed Moroccan facility is expected to begin production in October 2028.

The project is intended to contribute to lower-carbon aviation-fuel supplies.

The EBRD anticipates economic, employment and climate-related benefits.

The proposed financing structure is expected to benefit from international climate-finance support.

These are projections and proposed arrangements rather than completed outcomes.

Not established by the documents examined

The full Shell–Green Sky Manara purchasing agreement has not been independently examined.

Its detailed pricing, delivery obligations and financial guarantees remain undisclosed.

The documents do not establish that Shell owns or directly finances construction of the Moroccan refinery.

The EBRD’s proposed loan has not been established as finally approved and fully disbursed.

The facility has not begun commercial production.

Actual annual SAF output has not been established.

Final lifecycle-emissions performance has not been independently demonstrated through operating data.

The complete future feedstock supply chain has not been verified.

No finding of unlawful conduct, improper public-finance arrangements or false sustainability certification has been identified.

PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTARY SOURCES

1. Shell Aviation — Official Corporate Announcement, November 2026

Shell’s statement confirming the long-term agreement with Green Sky Manara, the proposed volumes and the October 2028 start-up target.

Read Shell Aviation’s Official Announcement

2. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — SAF Project Manara Morocco

Project No. 57785. Original disclosure dated 14 October 2026, last updated 29 October 2026.

The central source for the proposed $239 million development, production capacity, financing structure, environmental assessment and anticipated approval date.

Read the Complete EBRD Project Record

3. Morocco World News — 2 November 2026

Contemporaneous reporting of Shell’s agreement and the proposed Moroccan development.

Shell Secures Long-Term Supply Deal for Green Fuel Project at Nador West Med

4. Shell plc — 3 September 2025

Original corporate announcement confirming Shell’s decision not to resume construction of its Rotterdam biofuels facility.

Shell Will Not Restart Construction of Rotterdam Biofuels Plant

5. European Commission — ReFuelEU Aviation

Official explanation of the European Union’s sustainable aviation fuel requirements, including the progressively increasing minimum shares and separate synthetic-fuel obligations.

European Commission — ReFuelEU Aviation

6. European Commission — Union Database for Biofuels

Official explanation of the database intended to support renewable-fuel traceability and sustainability compliance.

European Commission — Union Database for Biofuels

7. Aviation Week — 2 November 2026

Contemporaneous industry reporting placing Shell’s Moroccan agreement alongside its earlier Egyptian SAF supply arrangements.

Shell Signs Morocco SAF Offtake Deal, Builds on Egypt Agreement

8. Donovan–Shell Archive — 2 July 2024

Historical coverage of Shell’s earlier decision to suspend construction of its proposed Rotterdam biofuels facility.

Shell Pauses Rotterdam Biofuels Plant Construction — Donovan–Shell Archive

DOCUMENTARY DISCLAIMER

This investigation is based on Shell Aviation’s official corporate communications, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s publicly disclosed project documentation, European Commission regulatory publications, authenticated Shell corporate announcements and contemporaneous reporting.

The investigation distinguishes the announcement of a long-term purchasing agreement from completion of the associated production facility.

The proposed Moroccan plant is not represented as an operating refinery.

Its projected production capacity and start-up date are identified as forward-looking expectations.

The EBRD’s proposed financing is distinguished from approved and disbursed funds.

The term committed tranche is used in the context of the proposed loan structure and does not imply that the entire financing package has received final institutional approval.

The anticipated involvement of the Green Climate Fund and European Union guarantee mechanisms is reported from the development bank’s documents.

No unsupported claim is made concerning the final financial exposure of those institutions.

The proposed borrower and project developer are distinguished from Shell Trading Rotterdam B.V., the announced fuel purchaser.

The full commercial agreement between Shell and Green Sky Manara has not been independently obtained.

No assumption is made concerning undisclosed pricing, guarantees or termination provisions.

Environmental and climate benefits are identified as prospective and dependent upon actual feedstocks, production processes and regulatory compliance.

No allegation is made that Shell, Green Sky Capital, Green Sky Manara or the EBRD has engaged in unlawful conduct.

No allegation is made that the project is based upon fraudulent sustainability certification.

Shell’s decision to abandon its Rotterdam biofuels facility is distinguished from its subsequent commercial agreement to purchase fuels from a separately developed facility.

The comparison is offered as an analysis of the different commercial structures involved, not as evidence of misconduct.

No project-specific court proceedings have been relied upon or represented as findings in this investigation.

Editorial analysis is identified separately from established documentary facts and attributed corporate statements.

Relevant corrections, additional primary records and responses from Shell, Green Sky Capital, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and other interested parties are welcome.

The website’s general disclaimer also applies.

Shell’s New Green Jet-Fuel Deal: A Deep Dive into the $239 Million Moroccan Project Still Awaiting Financing Approval was first posted on November 5, 2026 at 10:53 pm.
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While the national storyline coming out of the 2026 midterms is a broad Democratic wave, local elections across the Mountain West and Southwest showed that, for candidates of both parties, public lands were on the ballot.

From Wyoming to Montana to New Mexico to Arizona, Democrats and Republicans ran on their support for public lands, both in contested primaries and in general elections. Wyoming’s Republican governor-elect made opposing public land sales a signature of his campaign, beating a Trump-endorsed rival in the primary along the way. In Montana’s open, closely contested House seat, both the Republican and Democratic candidates made protecting public lands a central argument. In Arizona, a swing-district Republican congressman sponsored the bipartisan bill that created the nation’s newest national park, legislation that President Donald Trump signed into law two weeks before Election Day.

Meanwhile, public lands decisions over the last two years created a litmus test for candidates; For example, Utah Senator Mike Lee’s failed attempt to sell off millions of acres of public land in 2025 forced candidates at all levels to say whether they would support or oppose efforts to sell public lands. Public lands issues showed up in campaigns across the region, like Congress stripping protections to prevent mining near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, deep cuts to the staff who manage national parks and forests and fight wildfires, and the first approval of an AI data center on national public land in Nevada.

This was a wave election, and no single issue decided it. But the pattern was consistent: in the West, candidates embraced pro-public lands positions, and rejected efforts to privatize or sell them to the highest bidder. Even in the context of other important issues like affordability, health care, and education, 85 percent of voters across Mountain West states see issues involving public lands, waters, and wildlife as a motivating factor in supporting an elected official.

The Center for Western Priorities will release its full Winning the West post-election analysis later this year. In the meantime, here are a few key takeaways:

Key races by state Wyoming

Governor — Eric Barlow (R)

Barlow won Tuesday with about 69 percent of the vote, after winning the August Republican primary over Superintendent Megan Degenfelder, who had President Trump’s endorsement. Barlow made public lands a signature campaign issue. When asked on the campaign trail about selling federal lands, forests, and parks, Barlow responded, “The wholesale, fire sale of public lands is BS. I’m just not there.” Leading into the Republican primary he sponsored the Wyoming Legislature’s 2026 “Wyoming public lands are not for sale” resolution.

Legislative primaries: In August, Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus lost its state House majority, and several state legislators who backed transferring federal lands to the state lost their seats, including former caucus chair Rep. John Bear and Sen. Bob Ide, who drafted a 2025 resolution demanding the federal government hand over the land it manages to the state of Wyoming.

Montana

1st District, U.S. House — Sam Forstag (D)

Democrat Sam Forstag beat Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Aaron Flint in the race to represent western Montana. Forstag, a former U.S. Forest Service smokejumper, said he got into the race because public lands faced a “full-scale assault.” He said Montanans should be able to hunt, hike, and fish on public lands “without worrying that they’re going to be sold out from underneath us.” He tied the threat of land sales to the Trump administration’s cuts to land management agencies, saying, “In Montana, we lost nearly a quarter of my co-workers in the Forest Service last year,” and arguing at a town hall that “another way to sell off our public lands is to gut the agency.”

Republican Aaron Flint, who had President Trump’s endorsement, campaigned on a pledge to keep “public lands in public hands” and repeated that promise twice in October debates. Reporters and Democrats pointed to his past comments supporting the transfer of federal lands to the states. Data centers also became part of the public lands debate, with Forstag running an ad on Instagram that said, “Aaron has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from A.I.-funded SuperPACs.”

New Mexico

Governor — Deb Haaland (D)

Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland became the first Native American woman elected governor of a U.S. state, after closing her campaign with a pledge to keep “standing up to the Trump administration’s attacks on our public lands.” She warned that repealing the 2001 Roadless Rule would open more than 1.5 million acres of New Mexico’s national forests to development. Her Republican opponent, Gregg Hull, argued that forest management decisions should be “driven by the people who live closest to the land.”

2nd District, U.S. House — Gabe Vasquez (D)

Vasquez won re-election by about 18 points in a bellwether swing district President Trump carried in 2024. He co-founded the bipartisan Public Lands Caucus in 2025 and ran a TV ad pledging, “I won’t let anyone from any party sell [public lands] off at any price.” His Republican challenger, Greg Cunningham, also told the Albuquerque Journal, “New Mexico’s public lands aren’t for sale.”

Land Commissioner — Juan de Jesus Sanchez III (D)

Sanchez, a rancher and former Army Corps natural resources specialist, won the open land commissioner race with about 60 percent of the vote. Sanchez made public lands the core of his campaign, saying “With what’s happening at the federal level with the current administration in Washington, D.C., public lands really seem to be under attack. I would love to be elected to this position so I can be a champion for our public lands here in New Mexico.” After receiving Sen. Martin Heinrich’s endorsement, Sanchez said, “we certainly agree that we cannot let Donald Trump and his allies sell off our public lands and resources to the highest bidder.” His Republican opponent, Michael Perry, also opposed land sales, saying in a radio debate, “We really need to keep public lands in public hands.”

Nevada

Governor — Aaron Ford (D)

Ford unseated Republican Governor Joe Lombardo in a race where data centers on public land became one of the defining fights. In June, the Bureau of Land Management approved the first AI data center on federal public land, an 88.5-acre project near Boulder City. Boulder City’s council voted unanimously to appeal the approval, and a judge’s ruling has since stalled construction. Amid growing public backlash against data centers, Lombardo signed an executive order in September to require data centers seeking tax abatements to sign a “community support commitment” intended to ensure that regular and emergency water and power costs are borne solely by the data centers and not by ratepayers. Ford pledged to oppose data centers on public lands, arguing that affordable housing should be the priority. Ford attacked Lombardo’s order, saying in a statement, “Lombardo’s executive order is not a reflection of what Nevada communities are asking for.” Nevada Representative Dina Titus also pressed Lombardo to halt state tax breaks for data centers on federal land.

Arizona

6th District, U.S. House — JoAnna Mendoza (D)

Mendoza unseated Republican Representative Juan Ciscomani in a race fought mostly over health care and costs. Ciscomani made public lands a central part of his re-election pitch. He sponsored the bipartisan Chiricahua National Park Act, which President Trump signed into law on October 20. The law made Chiricahua Arizona’s fourth national park and the nation’s 64th. Ciscomani called the new park “a defining moment for our state.” He also co-sponsored the bipartisan Public Lands Integrity Act, which would block sales of federal public lands through budget reconciliation. His closing TV ad highlighted “working to preserve public lands like Sabino Canyon and the Chiricahuas.” Mendoza called Ciscomani’s public lands bonafides into question, highlighting his votes to rescind public land protections through the Congressional Review Act.

Governor — Katie Hobbs (D) 

Hobbs won re-election over Republican Andy Biggs in a race in which water and the Colorado River were central issues. Hobbs’ ads declared, “Arizona’s water is for Arizonans.” Amid federal cuts to Arizona’s Colorado River supply, water became voters’ top concern for the first time in the five-year history of the Center for the Future of Arizona’s survey. While not the primary focus of her campaign, Hobbs has long been a supporter of public lands. She came out forcefully against Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off national public lands in 2025, posting to X: “I strongly oppose auctioning off Arizona’s public lands to the highest bidder. This land grab will prevent us and our children from experiencing the beauty of Arizona.” And, in February 2026, on the anniversary of Grand Canyon National Park, she posted: “I’m committed to protecting our public lands so future Arizonans can experience the beauty and history of the Grand Canyon.”

Featured image: South Boundary Trail, Grand Teton viewed from Big Game Ridge. Source: NPS / Jacob W. Frank.

The post Candidates from both parties ran on a pro-public lands message in the 2026 midterms appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The planned lower-volume frack at the West Newton-A wellsite in East Yorkshire is likely to “materially reduce” available cash at an oil and gas company, it has emerged.

West Newton-A well site in East Yorkshire. Photo: DrillOrDrop

The total cost of entering and recompleting the A-2 well has been estimated at £3m.

Reabold Resources, the majority owner of the oil and gas field, had cash balances of £4m in June 2026.

Directors said this was “sufficient” to fund the group’s general and administrative expenditure, committed obligations and on-going non-project expenditure.

But they said:

“The Group’s current strategy includes the recompletion of the A-2 well at West Newton, which is expected to materially reduce the Group’s available cash resources and the Group will likely require additional funding thereafter in order to continue its planned activities and future obligations.”

The statements were in annual accounts for Rathlin Energy, Reabold’s subsidiary and the West Newton operator. The accounts were published today by Companies House but delayed since 30 September 2026.

According to the accounts, Rathlin’s cost share of the West Newton operation, estimated at £2m, would be funded from a £5m loan from Reabold, due to mature on 30 June 2027.

Work on the West Newton-A2 well has been scheduled for the final quarter of 2026. But, with just eight weeks remaining, there has been no reported work on the site and question marks over whether the operation will be completed on time.

A local environmental campaigner has brought a legal challenge against the Environment Agency over the environmental permit for the West Newton-A frack. He is also seeking a High Court injunction to halt work until the permit challenge has been resolved.

The accounts warned:

“the timing and availability of any future funding remain uncertain and may be significantly influenced by the outcome of the recompletion of the A-2 well.”

If the well recompletion were unsuccessful (described by the accounts as an unlikely event) the Group’s ability to secure further financing may be “adversely affected”.

The accounts acknowledged:

“there can be no assurance that the planned strategy will achieve the anticipated outcome or support the Group’s future funding requirements required to realise its assets and discharge its liabilities”.

They said: “there exists a material uncertainty concerning the ability of the Company to continue as a going concern”.

The accounts, which cover the year to December 2025, do not mention management changes at Union Jack Oil, a partner in the West Newton licence.

New Union Jack directors, appointed in August 2026, have said they are carrying out a “detailed review” of the company’s entire asset portfolio and discussions were underway with partners on some company interests.

Craig Howie, Union Jack’s executive chairman, said:

“We will be disciplined in where we allocate capital and only invest in projects with a clear commercial rationale and realistic prospect of success.”

The accounts also do not refer to Reabold’s failed takeover bid for Union Jack Oil.

Other details

Rathlin reported that its accounts did not include a strategic report, under an exemption in the Companies Act.

Rathlin said it had used CBIZ for an independent audit. But it said CBIZ was not registered as a UK statutory auditor so its audit report did not constitute a statutory auditor’s report under the Companies Act and so had not been included in the financial statements.

Rathlin also reported that West Newton decommissioning costs were now “expected to be incurred in 2070”. The company said this date had been extended in 2024 from 2033. Rathlin said:

“The revision to the timing was based on the latest estimates of the economic life of the field and the geological chance of success at West Newton”

In March 2025, Rathlin appointed Paul Harris, former chief executive of NEO Energy, as a non-executive director.

Key figures

From annual accounts for Rathlin Energy (UK) Limited for the year ending December 2025

Loss for the year: £778,000 (20An24: £804,000)

Admin expenses: £703,000 (2024: £775,000)

Net cash used in operating activities: loss of £715,000 (2024: loss of £673,000)

Total cash capital expenditure: £548,000 (2024: £805,000)

Cash and cash equivalents at end of the period: £158,000 (2024: £723,000)

Total employee costs: £372,000 (2024: £289,000)

Average number of employees: 5 (2024: 4)

Total assets: £21,931,000 (2024: £22,934,000

Total liabilities: £1,591,000 (2024: £1,816,000

Charges for management services from Connaught, former 20.4% shareholder: £278,689 (2024: £848,003)

Ownership of Rathlin Energy by Reabold Resources: 79.8%

From Chaco Canyon to the Arctic Refuge, to landmarks in the nation’s capital, BAAJA would make the Trump administration’s drilling, mining, and development approvals nearly impossible to undo

DENVER – The Center for Western Priorities, in partnership with Earthworks, today released an interactive map and analysis of national public lands where the Senate’s permitting bill, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, would lock in the Trump administration’s attacks. The map shows that landscapes from Bears Ears to the Tongass to the Boundary Waters are at risk of permanent destruction by BAAJA.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Communications Director Kate Groetzinger:

“This bill would lock in the Trump administration’s attacks on our public lands. Every oil and gas well permitted around Chaco Canyon, every mine approved upstream of the Boundary Waters, and every mile of road bulldozed through Gates of the Arctic would be nearly impossible for a future president or court to undo. Congress can build a better grid without selling out our most vulnerable landscapes. But, as written, BAAJA hands our public lands over to Trump to permanently destroy.

“This bill represents a false choice between protecting public lands and fighting climate change. The incoming Congress can and should do better. If the Senate moves forward with this bill as written, it will be a slap in the face to voters across the country who just demanded a new direction in Washington.”

Places at risk that are highlighted on the map:

• New Mexico: BAAJA would lock in new oil and gas leases around Chaco Canyon, where the administration is moving to revoke a 336,000-acre buffer and prospectors have staked more than 100 uranium claims. It could also lock in uranium mines near Mount Taylor and in the Rio Chama watershed, as well as permits for the 522-mile Desert Southwest Pipeline across Otero Mesa.

• Utah: Prospectors have filed more than 110 mining claims since Trump cut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by roughly 90 percent. Any mining plans approved by this administration would be nearly impossible to revoke, even if the monuments are restored. BAAJA would also lock in Valar Atomics’ Project Beehive, which seeks to put 456 nuclear reactors and a data center on public land near Price, if it is approved before Trump leaves office.

• Arizona: Federal permits for Resolution Copper’s mine at Oak Flat, which models show would collapse into a crater roughly two miles wide, swallowing a sacred Apache site, would become nearly untouchable.

• Colorado: Any oil and gas leases sold on the Roan Plateau, where an upcoming lease sale includes more than 4,600 acres atop a plateau that holds elk calving grounds and native trout habitat, would be locked in by BAAJA.

• Nevada: The Townsite data center outside Boulder City, the first AI data center approved on public land before it was paused by a legal intervention, would be much harder to stop if BAAJA passes and BLM moves ahead with approving it again.

• Minnesota: Any leases the administration issues to Twin Metals to mine upstream of the Boundary Waters, America’s most visited wilderness, would be almost impossible to revoke.

• Alaska: Oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and around Teshekpuk Lake, the Ambler Road through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, and old-growth timber sales in the Tongass National Forest would all be allowed to proceed by BAAJA.

• Washington, DC: Judges could no longer halt projects like Trump’s plans for the Kennedy Center, the East Potomac Golf Course, and a triumphal arch on National Park Service land over flawed environmental or historic preservation reviews if BAAJA becomes law.

The map is not an exhaustive list. Almost all public land outside national parks and other permanently protected areas could be put at risk by the disastrous provisions included in the bill.

Background:

The bill’s sponsors are selling it as a fix for America’s aging transmission system. But Section 1401 bars federal agencies from revoking, suspending, or changing any permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026, including those issued by the Trump administration, unless they can prove one of five narrow exceptions by “clear and convincing evidence.” That gives the Trump administration and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum just over two years to lock in drilling, mining, and other development on America’s public lands.

The bill would also tie the hands of courts. Under Section 1110 of the bill, a judge who finds an agency skipped or botched an environmental review could not cancel the permit or stop the project, only order the agency to redo the review while work continues. And under Section 1402, if a future administration slowed or paused permits for a category of projects, such as oil and gas drilling, compared with the previous five years, developers could sue and collect 50 to 100 percent of their expected construction costs from taxpayers. For a president taking office in 2029, that baseline would be the Trump years.

BAAJA would also stack environmental reviews in developers’ favor. Section 1106 would require agencies to toss out any alternative that doesn’t meet the developer’s own goals, such as a smaller mine or a different pipeline route, and would excuse them from considering science published after a review began. Section 2215 would make it easier for mining companies to dump waste rock and tailings on public land outside their claims. Section 2301 would rewrite the National Historic Preservation Act so agencies consult Tribes only after reaching their own conclusions about which cultural sites matter, as well as set short deadlines for Tribal Historic Preservation offices to weigh in on projects, and take away their power if they miss deadlines.

The climate math on the bill also leaves out public lands. Rhodium Group’s modeling, which finds BAAJA would cut emissions modestly, “does not include an attempt to reflect the permit certainty provisions of the bill.” Analyses by Resources for the Future and for the Solar Energy Industries Association model only the power sector. None of these analyses count the emissions from the drilling, mining, and gas-powered data centers the bill would lock in on public lands.

The full map and analysis are available here.

Learn more:

• The Senate permitting bill would lock in data centers and nuclear waste on public lands. It only gets worse from there – Westwise

• Permitting Bill Text Would Strip Our Most Basic Federal Protections – Earthworks

• Is the Trump administration illegally authorizing data centers on public land? – Westwise

• TWS Opposes S. 5653 over six threats to public lands – The Wilderness Society

• The Conservation Lands Foundation Opposes Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act – Conservation Lands Foundation

• Hard Questions About the Permitting Bill – NRDC

• Enviro lawyers say the permitting bill could aid Trump’s DC renovations – Politico

• How the Permitting Bill Threatens our Historic and Cultural Sites – Earthjustice

• Over 100 Groups Oppose Sweeping Attacks on Public Lands in Permitting Bill – Center for Biological Diversity

 

Feature image: Greater Chaco Region, Fajada Butte, NPS

The post New map: Senate permitting bill would lock in Trump’s assault on public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to see it, did it happen? 

To the mycelium and the worms, yes. 

To the birds that create nests and the insects that burrow deep, yes.

For the mammals and amphibians that make it their home, yes. 

For the water that finds refuge, yes. 

Industries have distorted our view of the world. Industries have made us think that the only value in forests is paper, pellets, and timber. But the value of standing forests is much more. There’s even value in dead and dying parts of the forest. There’s a big difference between tree plantations and biodiverse natural forests. 

Why are tree plantations bad?

A tree plantation is a crop. They’re even often called treefarms. Tree plantations are where people plant rows upon rows of one kind of tree. They’re often quick-growing and non-native. In tree plantations, even birdsong is hard to come by.

Tree plantations are worse than natural forests at providing:

• carbon storage
• water retention
• habitat for biodiverse species

Plus, tree plantations are more susceptible to forest fires. They’re a terrible replacement for natural forests. We should be pouring resources into saving our natural forests. 

The circle of life

The cycles of nature are all inherently valuable. 

When a tree falls, it begins something remarkable. After being a small part of a giant ecosystem, it becomes an ecosystem in itself. Naturally fallen trees become home to all the life-giving forces of nature. From the predators to the prey, from the worms to the fungi, from decay to life. It all happens in a hollowing log. The rot is home to much more than we’ll ever understand.

Woodpeckers nest and find food in rotting trees and logs

We often think of rot as bad news in our modern human lives. Rotting fruit in our homes means money lost. It means new food waste for our landfills. Rot in our gardens means our neighborhood beautification project is at risk. Rot in the wood of our homes or furniture is costly to repair. 

But rot isn’t just essential. It’s inevitable. Nature and life are synonymous with rot. To grow fruit, seeds, saplings, and vegetables, the soil must be nutrient rich. That happens in part because of rot. 

Some plants can take root in a way they couldn’t on a healthy standing tree. Some animals make their homes in dead trees. For decomposers to do their best work, they need rot and decay. Rot makes forests healthier.

The value of rot

To fully value nature we have to value all parts of it. Even those that are separate from our daily lives. By respecting the rot of nature, we can be better stewards of Mother Earth. We can’t create policies that don’t consider nature. Policies like that hurt nature, but they hurt us, too. We’re a part of nature. We must develop policies that account for the holistic functions of entire ecosystems.

We live in an era of devastation and forest destruction. We’re facing increasingly harsh impacts of climate change. It’s time for a different kind of forest advocacy. One that’s uncompromising in its love for all parts of nature. One that recognizes the big picture and doesn’t need a price tag or a pitch on its ROI. 

Dogwood Alliance is a proud advocate for the trees, the forests, the rot, and the have-nots. Communities who are dismissed, undervalued, and over-polluted. Forests that suffer from our dismal track record of conservation, protection, and stewardship. We value all the parts that make us whole. 

Together let’s fight for a better world. One with greater love for human and nonhuman life on this beautiful floating rock we call home. May we all find that love for ourselves, for one another, and for the forests. 

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TEJIENDO ALTERNATIVAS #21: Boletín del Tejido Global de Alternativas Tejiendo economías para la vida: Economías solidarias, bienes comunes, cuidados y futuros pluriversales Noviembre de 2026 Nota editorial El mes pasado, el Banco Mundial y el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) celebraron sus Reuniones Anuales en Bangkok, Tailandia, reuniendo a gobiernos, instituciones financieras y responsables de la formulación de políticas para deliberar sobre el futuro de la economía mundial. Más de och…

When Trump was elected both in 2016 and 2024, promising to make the federal government hostile to climate action, many climate advocates insisted that state and local governments would take up the mantle of pushing for clean energy. That’s the thesis of the “America Is All In” coalition, which brings together cities and states that have vowed to uphold America’s “climate commitments … [i]n the absence of federal leadership.” The unspoken caveat in these claims is that the states leading the way on climate policy are concentrated in a few liberal parts of the country, like New England and the West Coast.

The Democratic Party’s historic victory in this week’s midterm elections could change that. Democrats have secured control of both state legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion — also known as a “trifecta” — in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, three states that have spent years or decades under Republican or divided control. The three states have also lagged on support for clean energy. Democrats also restored trifectas in Minnesota, Michigan, and Nevada this week, but those are states where they last had unified control earlier this decade.

“It is impossible to overstate how monumental these results are,” said David Weiskopf, the senior policy director at Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit that works to elect climate-focused candidates and pass state climate policy. He said that the six states where Democrats have secured trifectas would be one of the world’s largest emitters if they made up their own country, rivaling Canada and Saudi Arabia.  “This is just a massive opportunity to make progress.”

Here’s how the election could open up the floodgates for new climate policy in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

Wisconsin Construction on a Meta data center in March in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The state’s legislature failed this year to pass a law that would require data centers to source their power from clean sources.
Joe Timmerman/Wisconsin Watch via Getty Images

Compared to its neighbors in the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin has been far less ambitious when it comes to ditching fossil fuels in its power sector. While Michigan and Minnesota have both passed laws that mandate that the states get all their power from clean sources by 2040, Wisconsin set a measly 10 percent renewable electricity standard more than two decades ago. It blew past that goal but never set a new target. Unlike most other states, it doesn’t even require utilities to plan for what kinds of power plants they want to build. The state gets a larger share of its electricity from coal than its immediate neighbors.  

Renewable energy advocates in the Badger State believe they can make some short-term gains with Democrats’ first trifecta since 2010. Erik Kanter, the policy director for the nonprofit Clean Wisconsin, said he believes that the new legislature can agree on the “low-hanging fruit” of making utilities plan for the future, which he said will nudge more of them to build renewables rather than extending the lifespans of gas and coal plants. The Wisconsin legislature failed this year to pass a law that would require data centers to source their power from clean sources, and Kanter expects such a measure to pass once Democrats take control. The legislature will also likely renew programs like Knowles-Nelson, a longstanding fund for parks and ecosystem preservation, which once enjoyed bipartisan approval but has lost support from Republicans in recent years. 

Weiskopf, of Climate Cabinet, believes that even more ambitious moves are in the offing. He expects Wisconsin’s new class of legislators to pursue a 100 percent clean electricity standard, filling what he calls a “Wisconsin-sized hole” in the Upper Midwest. Not only would that help to phase out coal in the state, it would also make it easier for neighboring states to meet their climate goals, since the whole region shares the same interconnected power grid.

Pennsylvania The NRG Station of SEPTA’s Broad Street Line in Philadelphia. Democrats in the Pennsylvania legislature intend to pass a rescue package for the state’s public transit systems. Emilee Chinn / Getty Images

The Pennsylvania Senate has long been known to Democrats as the place where climate policy goes to die. Even though the party managed to flip the lower house of the legislature a few years ago, Republican leaders in the upper chamber often refused to bring climate bills to a vote. The Keystone State’s status as a large producer of both natural gas and coal also made it difficult to secure agreements within the Democratic Party on clean energy proposals.

“You don’t want to let yourself fully imagine what it can be, because you’ve been let down in the past,” said Lindsey Williams, a state senator who represents a swath of the Pittsburgh metro area. “Now we’re in that moment of, wow, there’s so many things that we can accomplish.” 

Every year since 2019, Williams has introduced a bill that would establish mandatory energy and water efficiency standards for appliances like ovens and showerheads, a measure she said could save consumers millions of dollars a year. The legislation has never moved forward — but she thinks it will in next year’s session. 

She hopes Democrats will use their first trifecta since 1993 to advance a full-scope climate agenda. In addition to passing laws that would allow community solar and warehouse rooftop solar, Democratic lawmakers also want to pass a funding package for struggling mass transit systems like Philadelphia’s. The $1.5 billion infusion would help prevent the transit “death spiral” for those systems and would reduce reliance on gasoline-powered cars.

The state’s reelected centrist governor, Josh Shapiro, appears to be on board with at least some of these proposals. Although he withdrew the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a Northeast-wide carbon pricing system, he has promised to create a similar cap-and-trade system for Pennsylvania itself if he can get legislative support. He has also named funding for mass transit as a leading item on his agenda for the new legislative session next year. But Democrats will have to be careful: While they will now control both chambers, they’ll have slim majorities in each, and may have just a narrow two-year window to pass climate policy before one flips back.

“We need to be brave and lead,” said Williams. “Yes, what are the low-hanging fruits, but what are the big ambitious things that we can get done this session?”

Arizona Alfalfa fields at the Fondomonte farm in Butler Valley, Arizona. Democrats in the state legislature plan to pass a bill that would crack down on rural groundwater pumping. Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post via Getty Images

The last time Democrats had a trifecta in the Grand Canyon State was in 1966, decades before the general public was even aware of global warming. The state has ample sunshine and wind, so its renewable energy industry has grown quickly over recent years, and its grid is cleaner than in regions like the Midwest. Furthermore, the many new-built suburbs of the Phoenix metroplex tend to be heated with electricity rather than natural gas. Yet Republicans in the state legislature have all but banned climate and environmental policy, prohibiting the state government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions or energy usage, and numerous climate and water bills have failed in recent years.

Lauren Kuby, a longtime Democratic legislator who represents the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, says she and her colleagues have a long wish list that spans several issues. Their first order of business is to reform the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s utility regulator, which Kuby says has been slow to embrace new technologies like solar and wind even as developers seek to build more of them. Legislators want to pass a law that would direct the commission to make utilities invest in solar, batteries, and “virtual power plants,” or networks of homes and businesses that coordinate their energy usage. As part of the reform, they might even change the commission’s name, taking out the “corporation” and replacing it with “public utilities.” The two Democrats who appear set to win seats on the commission will make these reforms easier to push through.

The legislature could also break long-standing logjams on the crucial issue of water — a scarce resource in a desert state where climate change is worsening droughts. Kuby and other senators have been trying for years to pass a bill that would regulate groundwater pumping in the state’s rural areas. These areas are home to massive dairies and alfalfa farms like Riverview and the Saudi-backed Fondomonte, which have been blamed for sinking land and dried-up residential wells. The bill has failed in several legislative sessions, but Kuby believes that some form of regulation can pass in the coming year, bringing an end to the water free-for-all in the desert areas outside Phoenix.

“That has been languishing and has not been heard in the legislature, even though we have agreement from a lot of Republicans on water and environmental protection,” said Kuby. Of the trifecta, she said, “It’s a game-changer.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the midterms could unleash a new era for clean energy in these 3 states on Nov 5, 2026.

Open access notables

Evidence from 2024 Storm Boris indicates anthropogenic climate change amplifies floods more than extreme precipitation, Miersch et al., Science Advances

Anthropogenic climate change intensifies extreme precipitation, but how it affects flood hazards remains uncertain. In September 2024, Storm Boris triggered catastrophic flooding across central Europe, underscoring the need to quantify the contribution of human-caused climate change to flood intensity for effective risk management. Using a storyline approach, we show that precipitation associated with Storm Boris would have been 6 to 9% lower in the absence of anthropogenic climate change, whereas flood peaks would, on average, have been reduced by 14 to 22%. Our estimates are based on nudged simulations from two climate models coupled with two hydrological models across hundreds of affected catchments. The results imply that anthropogenic forcing amplified flood peaks by a factor of 2.1 to 2.9 relative to the increase in event precipitation. Overall, we demonstrate that attributing precipitation alone would substantially underestimate flood hazard amplification from climate change—an effect that should inform future risk assessments and loss estimates.

Increase of tropical cyclone-induced coastal flooding due to historical sea level rise, Mengel et al., Environmental Research Letters

Surges from tropical cyclones (TCs) cause significant damage in coastal areas. However, the contribution of historical sea level rise (SLR) to surge heights and thus the flooded areas has not been quantified on a global scale. Here, we use an open-source shallow water equation solver to estimate the impact of historical SLR on coastal flooding induced by all historical TCs with landfall from 1950 to 2025, according to the International Best Tracks Archive. We isolate the SLR effect through the comparison of factual simulations accounting for observed changes in sea level to counterfactual simulations without long term trends in sea levels. Results show that SLR has steadily increased the coastal area affected by TC-induced surges, from about 5% in 1950–1954 assuming mean tide levels (7% and 5% for minimum and maximum tide levels, respectively) to about 18% in 2021–2025 (22% and 13% for minimum and maximum tide levels, respectively) in comparison to the areas affected without SLR. The increase differs along coastlines, with maxima in relative increases of surge flooding along the North American Atlantic coastline and the Southeast Asian coastline. To put the numbers into perspective, we also estimate the associated increases assuming 1 m of local SLR and no changes in TC tracks and wind fields, reaching 146% under mean tide assumptions (192% for minimum tide levels and 92% for maximum tide levels). Results show that this is higher than expected assuming a linear relationship between SLR and relative increases in flood extents. Our analysis demonstrates the significant increase in flood extent induced by SLR already today. The generated data sets of factual and counterfactual coastal flooding extend ISIMIP3a climate-related forcing data, allowing for the evaluation and attribution of additional coastal impacts.

Incivility in public health policy discussions spills over to public engagement with climate issues: evidence from English-language social media, Narimanzadeh et al., Environmental Research Letters

Affective polarization and political sorting drive public antagonism around climate change and other issues at the science-policy nexus. We study cross-domain spillover of incivility in public engagements with climate change and public health on English-language Twitter and Reddit using the COVID-19 period as a case study. To assess whether spillover exists between these two policy domains, we examined how the incivility of climate discussions on social media varied by their co-occurrence with COVID-19 content and temporal coincidence with pandemic events. We find strong evidence of the signatures of affective polarization surrounding COVID-19 spilling into the climate change domain. Across different social media systems, COVID-19 content is associated with incivility in climate discussions. These patterns of increased antagonism were responsive to pandemic events that made the link between science and public policy more salient. We also looked at how climate discussions about international organizations and elites changed with the pandemic’s onset to show that the observed incivility spillover activated along overlapping pre-pandemic political cleavages, specifically anti-internationalist populist beliefs that linked climate policy opposition to vaccine hesitancy. Our findings show how affective polarization in public engagement with science becomes entrenched across policy domains, which has implications for how the public engages with and communicates about issues such as climate change and public health.

Public support for net-zero climate policy packages under political party cues, Hoyle et al., Environmental Politics

Despite widespread climate change mitigation pledges, effective policy implementation faces persistent political opposition. This study investigates how political party cues shape public support for multi-sectoral climate policy mixes, and whether distinct audience segments and levels of issue salience moderate these effects. We conducted a conjoint experiment with 1,201 Canadian adults who evaluated policy packages varying across regulations and support policies for transportation and housing, and party endorsements. Latent class analysis identified five distinct audience segments. Three main findings emerged. First, party cues were more influential than the contents of proposed policy packages. Second, despite heterogeneity across segments, rejection of government inaction and broad support for ‘bridge policies’ revealed unexpected consensus. Third, issue salience provided minimal insulation against party cue effects. Results suggest that in Canada’s polarized context, political messenger strategy may prove as consequential as policy design for building public support.

The cultural politics of risk: egalitarian civil society opposition to solar radiation modification, Guivant et al., Environmental Research Climate

Solar radiation modification (SRM) has become a focus of climate research and governance debate. While much of the governance literature addresses scientific assessment, responsible research, participation, and multilateral oversight, less attention has been paid to how civil society actors shape what counts as legitimate governance. This article examines how the ETC Group and allied actors construct opposition to SRM. Drawing on Cultural Theory of Risk, sociotechnical imaginaries, and interpretive discourse analysis of public materials from 2008 to 2025, it reconstructs a predominantly egalitarian repertoire organized around the vulnerability of nature and affected communities, distrust of concentrated expertise and corporate power, and claims concerning consent, sovereignty, and environmental justice. Hierarchical, individualist, and fatalist registers are incorporated into this repertoire in distinct ways: authority is affirmed when it supports limits, private initiative marks the adversary, and lock-in supplies the warning scenario. Three practices give this politics of refusal coherence: translating soft law into non-use, contesting field experiments as steps toward normalization, and constructing counter-expertise. The analysis shows that this position has political force because it exposes risks of normalization and concentrated authority. It also has crucial governance limits, narrowing the space in which research, assessment, participation, and Southern agency can be distinguished and debated.

From this week's government/NGO section:

Planetary Power: Geoengineering and the New Geopolitics of Climate Intervention, Olivia Lazard, editor, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Geoengineering is becoming a geopolitical question as much as a climate one. The way states and the private sector pursue these technologies, assess risks, and drive research increasingly appears focused on gaining a strategic edge. In a field where governance in lagging behind, Europe should keep track of the geopolitical implications if it is to develop effective regulatory frameworks. This compilation seeks to shift the focus away from evaluating hypothetical technologies and stylized strategic dilemmas and toward an understanding of the countries and actors that are developing, might use, and will have to govern these technologies. As such, the series is an important addition to existing analysis of climate intervention. The six articles ask what several key actors—nation-states and globally influential industries—think of geoengineering. How do they categorize the various approaches? What are their interests in having these still-hazy technological capabilities available for their own use or that of others? What are their goals and concerns? What interests and abilities do they have as developers, decisionmakers, or instigators of technologies, institutions, or governance approaches?

Coal Costs Americans: Tracking expensive giveaways to coal plants, Environmental Defense Fund

The Trump administration is propping up aging and unreliable coal plants that emit vast amounts of harmful air pollutants – even as it attempts to slow or block the construction of cleaner and more affordable sources of power. Americans are paying with their wallets and their health. The U.S. still has 184 coal-fired power plants operating across 39 states. Coal plants release mercury, heavy metals, and soot into the air, water, and food. The Trump administration is exploiting a variety of federal mechanisms to prop up 90 coal plants (189 units) in the U.S. That’s almost half of all grid-connected coal plants in the country. In 2025, the Trump administration handed out unlawful Clean Air Act exemptions to 154 units across 70 coal plants. The Department of Energy has committed $950 million in taxpayer dollars to prop up 24 coal plants, including helping finance two new plants and helping bring one retired plant back online. Under a Federal Power Act provision meant for true emergencies, the Department of Energy has repeatedly ordered 6 coal plants to keep operating past their retirement dates, in some cases for over a year.

Most voters believe climate change threatens the American Dream, Data for Progress, Grist

Voters view climate change itself as a problem for their aspirations. Fifty-eight percent of likely U.S. voters believe that the warming climate will hinder their ability to achieve or maintain the American Dream over the next 20 years — including 42 percent of Republicans. The typical elements of the American Dream — owning a home and a new car, raising kids, and other milestones — now add up to a price tag of $5.3 million per household. Why do so many people think climate change will hurt the American Dream, if it’s so close to the bottom of the list of their concerns today? One likely reason is that people are making the connection between climate change and the rising cost of living. More than half of voters are very worried about climate change making life more expensive over the next 20 years, according to the Data for Progress poll. That’s higher than the share of voters who are worried about warmer temperatures, extreme weather, crop failures, and degraded natural areas. 140 articles in 63 journals by 921 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Climate-Driven Straightening of Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Trajectories, Wang et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008511

Global warming and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation drive seasonally varying increases in extreme fire weather over the southwestern US, Lou et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04188-2

Phenology and surface energy balance changes across northern lands, Hau et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-23-7705-2026

Solar Heating of the Arctic Ocean Driven by Changes to Sea Ice Albedo, Siddiqui & Horvat, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl123085

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Fast-get-faster explains wavier upper-level jet stream under climate change, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01819-4 8 cites.

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Observations of climate change, effects

Climate-Driven Straightening of Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Trajectories, Wang et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008511

Detecting acceleration in global mean temperature using supralinear trends, Vera-Valdés, Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb55e

Evidence from 2024 Storm Boris indicates anthropogenic climate change amplifies floods more than extreme precipitation, Miersch et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aef7703

Expansion of the Wave Action Season Across Alaska's Marginal Seas, Miesse et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access pdf 10.1029/2025jc023800

Fingerprints of anthropogenic climate change in multi-season precipitation patterns across Sub-Saharan Africa, Rigden et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aea9be

Increase of tropical cyclone-induced coastal flooding due to historical sea level rise, Mengel et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/ae962b

Observed sub-surface warming in Northern Eurasia (1963–2022), Son & Kam, Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb0b8

Thermal amplification of drought and hydroclimatic regime shift in the Pantanal wetland, Santos et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aead0e

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Intensified Western Pacific Convection Increases the Probability of Hot Extremes in the Middle East During the Boreal Spring, Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, 10.1029/2024jd042048 6 cites.

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Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

A global inventory of rock glaciers, Jones et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-018-21244-w

Climate-driven spatial variability of height growth revealed by bitemporal airborne laser scanning data in dry conifer forests, Riofrío et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111569

Early Climate Impact Assessments Targeted 2025—How Did They Perform for Global Water Resources?, Conway et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1002/wcc.70091

The Standardized Soil Moisture-Temperature Compound Index (SSTCI): daily scale global data set and event catalogue for compound dry-hot extremes (1961–2023), Aftab et al., Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-7981-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Continuity in Top-of-Atmosphere Earth Radiation Budget Observations, Journal of Climate, 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0180.1 37 cites.

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Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Evaluation of high-resolution river discharge over Europe based on the ICON-CLM climate ensemble simulations, Hagemann et al., KITopen Open Access 10.5445/ir/1000198252

Evaluation-Constrained Projections Reveal a Potentially Navigable Arctic by the 2030s, ZHANG et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl123566

Fire-weather extremes over the Iberian Peninsula: Intensification and seasonal reorganization in deep-learning downscaled projections, Mirones et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2026.100970

Imminent Emergence of Permanent Surface Marine Heatwave States Across Global Oceans, Khan et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008642

Regional Pathways and Impacts of Greenland Ice Sheet Meltwater Simulated in a Sea Ice?Ocean Model, Kusahara et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022467

Shortened Wet Seasons in the Southern Hemisphere Land under Global Warming, Guo et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0439.1

Zero emissions commitment depends on warming level, Gibbs et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access 10.1038/s41558-026-02776-w

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Land Processes Can Substantially Impact the Mean Climate State, Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2024gl108372 21 cites.

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Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

Coarse climate model grids underestimate coastal humid-heat extremes, Carniel et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.ael4020

Deploying machine learning components coupled to Earth System Models with OASIS3-MCT (v6) and Eophis (v1.1), Barge et al., Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-10345-2026

Does higher-resolution climate forcing improve impact model performance?, Malle et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb279

Emergent constraints improve near-term temperature projections over China: evaluations against observations based on the preindustrial baseline, Fan et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb559

Evaluation of CMIP6 models in reproducing spatially averaged historical temperature and precipitation, Özcan et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105783

Using a two-stage Rosenbrock solver to increase computational efficiency in the DOE's Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1), Chien & Fu, Geoscientific model development Open Access pdf 10.5194/gmd-19-10309-2026

Why Icebergs and Their Interactions with Sea Ice Should Be Included in Earth System Models, Vancoppenolle et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Open Access 10.1175/bams-d-25-0322.1

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Effects of urban areas on the diurnal cycle of temperature and precipitation in a global climate simulation, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 10.1002/qj.4847 6 cites.

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Cryosphere & climate change

Atmospheric stabilization of the East Antarctic ice sheet under warming, Yun & Timmermann, Nature Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-026-02791-x

Contrasting regional trends in interannual variability of Antarctic winter sea ice and their atmospheric teleconnections, Yu et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb437

Drivers of 2024 Record Low Sea Ice in Eastern Hudson Bay: A Satellite Era Perspective, Dworak et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026jd047706

Empirical evidence of overestimated Ku-band sea ice radar freeboards in satellite altimetry, Taelman et al., The Cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-6181-2026

Evaluation of sea ice variability in three ocean reanalyses and two regional models in the Barents and Kara Seas in 1991–2020, Äijälä et al., Ocean science Open Access 10.5194/os-22-3537-2026

Rate-induced tipping of ice sheets due to visco-elastic Earth response under idealized conditions, Feldmann et al., The Cryosphere Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-20-6131-2026

Regional Pathways and Impacts of Greenland Ice Sheet Meltwater Simulated in a Sea Ice?Ocean Model, Kusahara et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2025jc022467

Reversal of Antarctic Intermediate Water trends triggered by sea ice decline, Mishra et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02758-y

Temperature extremes accelerate cryospheric degradation and alter hydrological processes in the source region of the Yangtze River, Cheng et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.accre.2026.10.009

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Assessing the impact of artificial geotextile covers on glacier mass balance and energy fluxes, Advances in Climate Change Research, 10.1016/j.accre.2024.10.007 21 cites.

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Sea level & climate change

A century of sea-level change in Ireland (1925–2024), McLoughlin et al., Ocean science Open Access pdf 10.5194/os-22-3499-2026

Increase of tropical cyclone-induced coastal flooding due to historical sea level rise, Mengel et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/ae962b

Projected Changes in Extreme Sea Level and Sea-Level Distribution in the China Marginal Seas Using Dynamical Downscaling, Jin et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026jc024403

Sea-level rise and coastal hazards expose critical infrastructure vulnerabilities across O‘ahu, Mikkelsen et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aeab02

Sea-level rise drives unequal erosion of global ecosystem service value, Hu et al., PNAS Nexus Open Access 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag339

Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry

Glacial CO2 drawdown by plankton metabolic balance, Cael et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-78422-y

The Artinskian Warming Event: A global perspective on a resilient Earth system tipping point and the onset of the transition out of the Late Paleozoic Icehouse, Li et al., Earth-Science Reviews 10.1016/j.earscirev.2026.105751

Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

Accelerating anthropogenic influence on annual peak wood density and associated carbon accumulation across northern conifers, Wang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-04198-0

Climate and Other Human Causes of Spatial Variation in Mallard Mortality and Population Dynamics, Lohman et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.1002/ece3.74596

Climate-Driven Distribution Modeling of the Glacial Apollo Butterfly (Parnassius glacialis) for Biodiversity Conservation, Wang et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.74412

Conservative Spruce Outperforms Acquisitive Larch Under Warming and CO2, Song et al., Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.71157

Contrasting responses of copepods and jellyfish to hydroclimatic change in the coastal waters of northern Taiwan in the southern East China Sea, Lee et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.108530

Divergent climate signals in growth of adjacent Larix sibirica forests: the role of microsite conditions, Wu et al., Dendrochronologia 10.1016/j.dendro.2026.126626

Effects of ocean acidification on benthic colonization and ecological succession on carbonate stones used in cultural heritage at the CO2 vent system of Castello Aragonese, Marchettoni et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2026.108526

Elevating resilience: a multi-site synthesis of sediment placement as a lifeline for saltmarsh sparrows (Ammospiza caudacuta), Raposa et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1910874

Evaluating the Potential of Four Native Ziziphus Species for Restoring Savanna-Like Habitats in Jinsha River Under Climate Change, Xu et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.1002/ece3.74531

Feedbacks between natural climate solutions and plant invasions, Beaury & Levine, Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb0b9

Impacts of weather events on the effectiveness of climate adaptation interventions for threatened species, Luo et al., Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 10.1890/0012-9623(2008)89[467:stef]2.0.co;2

Interacting Effects of Climate and Land Use on Biodiversity: A Guide to What They Are and Why They Matter, Arnell et al., Global Ecology and Biogeography Open Access pdf 10.1111/geb.70322

Regeneration beyond the treeline: Seed and seedling performance of the Himalayan birch tree under climate warming, Dar et al., Journal of Ecology Open Access pdf 10.1111/1365-2745.70466

Research on urban landscape ecological restoration and spatial renewal in the context of climate change, Liu, Discover Environment Open Access pdf 10.1007/s44274-026-01171-8

Widening asynchrony between canopy greening and carbon uptake phenology across the Northern Hemisphere, Chen et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111556

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Additionality in Blue Carbon Ecosystems: Recommendations for a Universally Applicable Accounting Methodology, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.17559 27 cites.

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GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

Accelerating anthropogenic influence on annual peak wood density and associated carbon accumulation across northern conifers, Wang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-026-04198-0

Atmospheric Evidence of CO2 Fertilization Enhancing Arctic CO2 Seasonal Cycle Amplitude, Hu et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gb009375

Carbon Processing Domains: Seasonal and Spatial Controls on Dissolved Organic Carbon in a Montane River, Young et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.1029/2025jg009488

Contrasting Responses of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Fluxes Following Thermokarst Erosion Across Tundra-Lake Interfaces in the Western Canadian Arctic, Bennett et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2026jg009893

Direct Flux Measurements Reveal CO2 Sinks in Icelandic Glacial Streams Driven by Weathering and Hydrological Mixing, Wild et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2026jg010081

Erosion carbon dynamics extend beyond carbon accounting to ecological significance, Xiao, Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04203-6

Impacts of shrub coverage for arctic ecosystem carbon uptake and storage, Emmerichs et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-7609-2026

Monthly-updated territorial fossil CO2 emissions estimates for Japan, Kunimitsu & Andrew, Earth system science data Open Access 10.5194/essd-18-8003-2026

Quantifying and attributing CO emissions over Central Asia using TROPOMI and explicit observational uncertainty, Feng et al., Atmospheric chemistry and physics Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-26-15139-2026

Satellite-Based Assessment Reveals Patterns of Coastal Marsh Carbon Sequestration Along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts, Yang et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008763

Sector-detailed urban greenhouse gas emission futures derived from the ScenarioMIP-CMIP7 ensemble, Luderer et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aea34f

Spatiotemporal dynamics of carbon sources and sinks and driving mechanisms of net carbon emissions: a case study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Tan et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1917084

Surface Subsidence as an Effective Indicator of Methane Emissions From Underground Coal Mines, He et al., Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres Open Access pdf 10.1029/2025jd045292

Synthesis of greenhouse gas emission factors for forest organic soils in the Köppen–Geiger Dfb climate zone, Butlers et al., Biogeosciences Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-23-7559-2026

The uncertain impacts of an 1.5 °C overshoot-and-decline scenario on carbon stocks and productivity in terrestrial ecosystems, Boeschoten et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb4cc

Wildfire severity reshapes soil organic carbon fractions and stabilization pathways in a subalpine forest, Peng et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access pdf 10.3389/ffgc.2026.1991068

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Aridity-Driven Change in Microbial Carbon Use Efficiency and Its Linkage to Soil Carbon Storage, Global Change Biology, 10.1111/gcb.17565 56 cites.

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CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Carbon-Based Adsorbents for CO2 Capture: Mechanism-Guided Material Design and Data-Driven Optimization, Cai et al., Carbon Neutralization Open Access pdf 10.1002/cnl2.70211

Global dynamics and governance implications of forest carbon projects in the voluntary carbon market: Evidence from Verra, Bayssi et al., Anthropocene 10.1016/j.ancene.2026.100595

Initial affect shapes risk-benefit information processing and public support for carbon dioxide removal technologies, Helm et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb81e

Modeling afforestation suitability in the Cross-Niger transition forest through remote sensing and analytical hierarchy process to advance global goals, Enoh et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-77144-x

When carbon counts differ: the complexities of biogenic carbon accounting in BECCUS and why accounting choices matter, Gomez et al., Figshare Open Access 10.6084/m9.figshare.34874979

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Afforestation Reduces Deep Soil Carbon Sequestration in Semiarid Regions: Lessons From Variations of Soil Water and Carbon Along Afforestation Stages in China's Loess Plateau, Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences, 10.1029/2024jg008287 18 cites.

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Decarbonization

Dynamics of acceptance and domestication of residential solar photovoltaics: insights from Lisbon households, Ribeiro, Environmental Sociology 10.1080/23251042.2026.2754118

Enabling vehicle-grid interaction through carbon credit trading for renewable energy integration in China, Lin et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115699

Global warming intensifies compound renewable energy droughts, Aminimehr et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04183-7

Towards European hydrogen market design: Perspectives from transmission system operators, Saretta et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2026.115634

Translating sulfur flow batteries into deployable systems, Ai et al., Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-026-02152-0

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Renewable energy quality trilemma and coincident wind and solar droughts, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01850-5 52 cites.

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Geoengineering climate

The cultural politics of risk: egalitarian civil society opposition to solar radiation modification, Guivant et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aea58c

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: A fully coupled solid-particle microphysics scheme for stratospheric aerosol injections within the aerosol–chemistry–climate model SOCOL-AERv2, Geoscientific model development, 10.5194/gmd-17-7767-2024 18 cites.

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Aerosols

Distinct climate responses to regional aerosol reductions: an overview of the regional aerosol model intercomparison project, Wilcox et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aeb71a

Observing formation and early evolution of contrails formed by IAGOS aircraft using high-resolution LEO satellite imagery, Woldhuis et al., Atmospheric measurement techniques Open Access 10.5194/amt-19-6891-2026

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Data collation for climate-cooling gas dimethylsulfide in Antarctic snow, sea ice and underlying seawater, Scientific Data, 10.1038/s41597-024-04038-w 2 cites.

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Climate change communications & cognition

Decoding climate anomalies—From scientifically sound to societally relevant, Brown et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2321154122

Environmental Motivation’s Relevance to CO2 Emissions, Neef et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103275

Evaluating the effectiveness of climate change communication to young people across Southern Africa, Gamede, Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2026.1927889

Feeling less rushed by seeing more green: How passive green space exposure reduces perceived time poverty through sense of control, Liu et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103272

Heterogeneous impacts of temperature extremes on climate attitudes and Green voting, Bassetto et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2321153122

Incivility in public health policy discussions spills over to public engagement with climate issues: evidence from English-language social media, Narimanzadeh et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb682

Public support for net-zero climate policy packages under political party cues, Hoyle et al., Environmental Politics Open Access pdf 10.1080/09644016.2026.2752535

The carbon divide: exploring economic and cultural dimensions of climate change attitudes and climate policy support in the Netherlands, Slageren et al., Environmental Politics Open Access pdf 10.1080/09644016.2026.2752537

The Climate Change Conspiracy Belief Scale: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Measure, Gourville et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103276

The Emotional Profiles of Climate Audiences: Mapping Climate Emotions Across the Six Americas, Ma?ecki et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103269

Uncivil climate: the politicization of environmental discourse on Reddit (2008–2025), Lun et al., Environmental Sociology 10.1080/23251042.2026.2754063

Who Acts on Climate Concern? Socio-Demographic Patterns of the Concern–Behaviour Gap in Hungary, Bodor et al., Climate Resilience and Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1002/cli2.70073

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Do You See What I See? Emotional Reaction to Visual Content in the Online Debate About Climate Change, Environmental Communication, 10.1080/17524032.2024.2420787 8 cites.

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Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Agriculture and food systems at a critical climate juncture, Nguyen, Tap chi Moi truong Open Access pmh:oai:vjol.info.vn:article/122059

Integrating climate change into pattern-based modelling of agricultural and forest land dynamics in Romania, Kucsicsa et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-75331-4

Intensification and Spatial Reorganization of Drought Risks for Global Rainfed Crops Under Climate Change, Wang et al., Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.71164

Spatiotemporal Propagation and Future Risks of Agricultural Drought in Response to Meteorological Drought Across Asia, Lu et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008228

Synergistic Management of Abandoned Cropland Mitigates Trade-Offs Between Food Security and Climate Mitigation in Hilly and Mountainous Areas, Bai et al., Earth s Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026ef008062

The role of climate information in enhancing household food security in rural northern Ghana, Zakaria & Alhassan, Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1992976

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Past and future impacts of marine heatwaves on small-scale fisheries in Baja California, Mexico, Communications Earth & Environment, 10.1038/s43247-024-01696-x 21 cites.

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Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

A Satellite-Based Analysis of Changes in Extreme Precipitation over West Africa, Klutse et al., Earth Systems and Environment Open Access pdf 10.1007/s41748-021-00203-y

Anthropogenic climate change intensifies rainfall in extreme compound rainfall-wave events in the NW Mediterranean, Aguilera-Vidal et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aebaa0

Early Climate Impact Assessments Targeted 2025—How Did They Perform for Global Water Resources?, Conway et al., Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1002/wcc.70091

Enhanced Sensitivity of the Asian Water Tower to La Niña in the 21st Century, Wu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl125445

Evidence from 2024 Storm Boris indicates anthropogenic climate change amplifies floods more than extreme precipitation, Miersch et al., Science Advances Open Access 10.1126/sciadv.aef7703

Recent Slowing Arctic-Amplified Warming Drives an Unprecedented Water Recovery in the World's Most Voluminous Freshwater Lake, Wang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2026gl124400

Robust Increase in Extreme Future Precipitation in the Lake Victoria Basin Based on Kilometer-Scale Regional Climate Projections, Sunguti et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-25-0682.1

Temperature extremes accelerate cryospheric degradation and alter hydrological processes in the source region of the Yangtze River, Cheng et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.accre.2026.10.009

The flip side of destructive wildfires: a water supply buffer to climate change, Zamora-Reyes et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aea9bf

Thermal amplification of drought and hydroclimatic regime shift in the Pantanal wetland, Santos et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aead0e

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Anthropogenic warming has ushered in an era of temperature-dominated droughts in the western United States, Science Advances, 10.1126/sciadv.adn9389 70 cites.

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Climate change economics

Governing global capital: How state capacity and climate policy credibility attract sustainable investment, Zheng, PNAS Nexus Open Access pdf 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgag315

Is there an environmental Kuznets curve in Saudi Arabia? cointegration and decoupling evidence, Muneer et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1955888

The finance sector should capture the full range of climate change risks, Gambhir et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04160-0

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Promoting low-carbon energy transition through green finance: New evidence from a demand-supply perspective, Energy Policy, 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114376 49 cites.

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Climate change mitigation public policy research

Assessing processes and evidence for highest possible ambition in Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement, Schönfeld et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb55f

Enabling climate change action in cities: a systematic assessment of conditions, Burch et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aea4c8

Mitigation justice, Reich et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2411231122

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: A globally just and inclusive transition? Questioning policy representations of the European Green Deal, Global Environmental Change, 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102946 36 cites.

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Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Assessing household resilience to climate change using resilience index approach in southwest Ethiopia, Abafogi et al., Scientific Reports Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41598-026-78210-0

Climate change and cultural resources: assessing exposure to impacts of climate change in New Mexico and Arizona, Maerhofer, Journal for the Study of Radicalism 10.14321/jstudradi.17.2.0083

Equity dimensions of future vulnerabilities to climate hazards: Long-term spatial population projections for New York City consistent with Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, Balk et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2407568122

Fire risk to U.S. structures nearly triples by mid-century, Iglesias et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-026-78904-z

Inclusivity of climate services in climate-resilient urban planning: A policy analysis of Ghana's National Frameworks, Nortey et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2026.103208

Opportunities for Increasing Resilience to Changing Severe Weather in Southern Africa: “Early Action and Enhanced Adaptive Capacity for All”, Kendon et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Open Access 10.1175/bams-d-25-0196.1

Sea-level rise and coastal hazards expose critical infrastructure vulnerabilities across O‘ahu, Mikkelsen et al., Environmental Research Climate Open Access pdf 10.1088/2752-5295/aeab02

The resilience contract: Comparing climate resilience planning and community realities in Dominica, Nicholas et al., Global Environmental Change Open Access 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103254

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Plant traits, microclimate temperature and humidity: A research agenda for advancing nature-based solutions to a warming and drying climate, Journal of Ecology, 10.1111/1365-2745.14313 57 cites.

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Climate change impacts on human health

Heat Force: A new operational 0–10 scale for environmental heat stress, Marghidan et al., Temperature Open Access 10.1080/23328940.2026.2755199

Humid-heat shifts conceptions and increases pregnancy termination risks in Nigeria, Brooks et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2321152122

Indoor temperatures above 26 °C impose disproportionate cardiovascular strain on older adults, O’Connor et al., Temperature Open Access pdf 10.1080/23328940.2026.2750778

Loss and damage as mental health policy: Valuing what cannot be replaced, Kumar, PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0001100

Projecting potential population exposure to the invasive malaria vector Anopheles stephensi, Sun et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb558

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Atmospheric health burden across the century and the accelerating impact of temperature compared to pollution, Nature Communications, 10.1038/s41467-024-53649-9 35 cites.

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Climate change & geopolitics

Climate security narratives in transboundary river basins: the discursive politics of the Helmand River Basin, Nofeli & Mianabadi, Environmental Politics 10.1080/09644016.2026.2745335

Pushing for more: Policy norms and climate clubs in global politics, Reischl et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access pdf 10.1016/j.erss.2026.105049

Other

Important but Overlooked Reactive Organic Carbon (ROC) Air Pollution From Permafrost Wildfires in Canada, Liu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2026gl124165

Spring Greenland–Kara sea-ice dipole preconditions the development of the 2020 record marine heatwave in the Eurasian Arctic marginal seas, Fan et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2026.109428

Two large unstable slopes in West Greenland illustrates an emerging Arctic tsunami hazard, Keiding et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-026-04175-7

Urban Climate Risks and Corporate Green Innovation: Evidence from China, Gao & Zhang, Sustainability Open Access 10.3390/su18178804

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Expanding European fossil-based plastic production in a time of socio-ecological crisis: A neo-Gramscian perspective, Energy Research & Social Science, 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103759 13 cites.

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Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

Fossil-fuel subsidy reform as a step towards a just transition: a litmus test for COP31, Haksal, Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2026.1998936

How democracy depends on science — and must protect it, Kahanec et al., Nature 10.1038/d41586-026-03510-4

Southeast Asian voices on climate change, Eng et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02783-x

Strategic science is needed to mitigate warming-induced emissions and bioclimate feedbacks effectively and efficiently, Buma et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1088/1748-9326/aeafc0

The overshoot integral can inform climate science and policy beyond 1.5 °C of warming, Dyke et al., Environmental Research Letters Open Access 10.1088/1748-9326/aeb55a

Time to drop the no-policy business-as-usual baselines, George & Patwardhan, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-026-02787-7

Most cited from this section, published 2 years ago: Forest canopies as nature-based solutions to mitigate global change effects on people and nature, Journal of Ecology, 10.1111/1365-2745.14345 52 cites.

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

Coastal Flooding Risks for California, Fraser Shilling, Road Ecology Center; University of California, Davis

Coastal areas in California are likely to face enhanced flooding and erosion risk this winter from a combination of sea level rise and El Nino. All the problems that are occurring now were predicted years ago and people should not be surprised when they start happening.

The Opportunity for Heat Pumps to Put Downward Pressure on Electricity Rates, Shea et al., RMI

The authors identify residential heat pumps as an overlooked opportunity to further improve grid use by strategically adding additional electricity sales within available winter headroom — the available winter generation capacity after reserves above winter peak demand. In doing so, heat pumps can simultaneously put downward pressure on electric rates, i.e., lower rates relative to what they otherwise would be, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Coal Costs Americans: Tracking expensive giveaways to coal plants, Environmental Defense Fund

The Trump administration is propping up aging and unreliable coal plants that emit vast amounts of harmful air pollutants – even as it attempts to slow or block the construction of cleaner and more affordable sources of power. Americans are paying with their wallets and their health. The U.S. still has 184 coal-fired power plants operating across 39 states. Coal plants release mercury, heavy metals, and soot into the air, water, and food. The Trump administration is exploiting a variety of federal mechanisms to prop up 90 coal plants (189 units) in the U.S. That’s almost half of all grid-connected coal plants in the country. In 2025, the Trump administration handed out unlawful Clean Air Act exemptions to 154 units across 70 coal plants. The Department of Energy has committed $950 million in taxpayer dollars to prop up 24 coal plants, including helping finance two new plants and helping bring one retired plant back online. Under a Federal Power Act provision meant for true emergencies, the Department of Energy has repeatedly ordered 6 coal plants to keep operating past their retirement dates, in some cases for over a year.

North Carolina Power Pathways: A stakeholder-Directed Scenario Analysis, Energy Futures Group, North Carolina Office of the Governor

The authors created a stakeholder-driven modeling exercise to inform engagement and action on a wide range of questions pertaining to the North Caroli's electricity system. The modeling included the development of a Base Case scenario representing Duke Energy and replicated the utility’s assumptions wherever they were made publicly available. The authors also ran six scenarios and two sensitivities for comparison against the Base Case, representing alternate policy, technology, or cost futures that the Subcommittee deemed most important for assessment. All scenarios were run across a modeling period from 2026 to 2050. The authors present the results of the scenario assessment. The magnitude, timing, and expected operation of new large load customers together, along with planned fossil retirements, will require construction of new gas-fired generation as part of a portfolio of other generating resources across all scenarios. In the Base Case, large load customers are responsible for 5.8 GW of increased demand by 2035. Load forecasting based on actual committed customer demand is a critical tool to mitigate the high risk associated with over-forecasting and large percentage of load growth driven by large customers. The Path to Net Zero Case indicates that beginning the transition to net zero emissions earlier and modifying certain assumptions about technology cost and availability, given supportive policies, may reduce overall costs.

The Good Anthropocene: The Science, Community and Art of Hope, Benedict Dempsey and Lindsey Gillson, University of York and WWF-UK

The authors explore the issue of positive futures in the context of three areas of the UK – Pembrokeshire, Norfolk and the Firth of Forth. In these locations, WWF-UK is running ‘Wholescape’ projects designed to enable communities to work together in ways that benefit climate, nature and people together. People were asked in those places to imagine positive futures over the lifetime of a child born today and further, seven generations into the future. In ways uniquely suited to their areas, people imagined greater connection with nature, increased community connectedness, and happier and healthier lifestyles. They envisioned transformed food, transport, education, energy and housing. They imagined productive landscapes managed for the good of people and nature, where a sense of stewardship and connection replaced today’s fragmented and frenetic lifestyles. The futures people imagined felt more secure and less precarious, where the pace of change is less breakneck. Life is quieter and greener – seeing not only technological change, but changes to everyday life so that fulfilment is found through meaningful connections to people, place and nature. In these imagined futures, innovation blends with tradition to create visions that are at the same time different and familiar.

Methane Made in America_, N/A, Law (UCLA)

The authors spotlight 15 of the highest-emitting methane sources in the three U.S. oil and gas basins that export the most LNG to Europe: the Permian, Appalachian,?and Haynesville basins. They also assess, for the first time, what is known — and not known — about potentially responsible operators for these sites and for other large methane plumes throughout those basins. As U.S. natural gas production grows, the goal with the report is to shed further light on super-emitting sources of methane, one of the most potent heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The authors provide a user-friendly ranking of the top 10 oil and gas sites in those three basins, as seen by one of the most sophisticated methane-detection satellites in the world. They authors define the top 10 sites as those with the highest average methane emission rate observed from January 1,?2025, to June 1,?2026, by the Tanager-1 satellite, excluding sources with two or fewer detected plumes.

Electric Vehicle Fires: What the Data Sources Tell Us, Jess Senger, Plug In America

Electric vehicles are less likely to catch fire than gas vehicles. This finding is replicated in six major studies worldwide. Electric vehicles present a lower fire risk than gas vehicles: for every 100,000 vehicles, gas car fires were more frequent. Further research can investigate the causes of vehicle fires and the relationship between fire incidents and vehicle age. Long-term data is needed to research these topics.

Data centres for grids: the potential impact of flexibility, Elisabeth Cremona, Ember

The author explores how much data centers could alleviate stress on power grids during peak events through two mechanisms: shifting consumption to other hours/locations or switching to onsite generators. With limited data on data centers, the analysis draws on assumptions from available literature. An interactive calculator lets readers test these ranges. Data centers could account for 25% of peak demand by 2030 in certain markets. Only 3% of data center capacity is estimated to be available for load shifting in 2030. Onsite generation could offer nearly five times more grid relief than load shifting - but this flexibility mechanism also brings risks.

Most voters believe climate change threatens the American Dream, Data for Progress, Grist

Voters view climate change itself as a problem for their aspirations. Fifty-eight percent of likely U.S. voters believe that the warming climate will hinder their ability to achieve or maintain the American Dream over the next 20 years — including 42 percent of Republicans. The typical elements of the American Dream — owning a home and a new car, raising kids, and other milestones — now add up to a price tag of $5.3 million per household. Why do so many people think climate change will hurt the American Dream, if it’s so close to the bottom of the list of their concerns today? One likely reason is that people are making the connection between climate change and the rising cost of living. More than half of voters are very worried about climate change making life more expensive over the next 20 years, according to the Data for Progress poll. That’s higher than the share of voters who are worried about warmer temperatures, extreme weather, crop failures, and degraded natural areas.

Estimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, King et al., Rhodium Group

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) is currently under consideration in the US Senate. If passed, the bill makes substantial changes to federal environmental permitting laws and how electric power transmission lines are planned, permitted, and paid for. The authors modeled key components of the initial version of BAAJA, introduced on September 30, focused on reducing barriers to building linear infrastructure, i.e., transmission lines and gas pipelines, and on protecting ratepayers from higher grid costs due to AI data center buildout. The results reflect the additional effects of the BAAJA provisions beyond a baseline of current policy without BAAJA. The authors project that the combined effect of these provisions would reduce household electricity bills by $50-78 per year in 2040 compared to without BAAJA, both because easier permitting would allow lower-cost resources to connect to the grid and because the bill explicitly prohibits charging non-data center customers for data center costs. The transmission provisions of the bill enable accelerated average interregional transmission build rates nearly triple that of the last decade or more and drive an additional 17-249 GW of clean resources to be built through 2040. The bill as a whole increases liquefied natural gas (LNG) export levels by 8-15% beyond a 76-145% increase already happening under current policy. Taken together, these provisions uniformly reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 5-148 million metric tons annually in 2040 and as much as 1.5 gigatons cumulatively, compared to without BAAJA.

Planetary Power: Geoengineering and the New Geopolitics of Climate Intervention, Olivia Lazard, editor, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Geoengineering is becoming a geopolitical question as much as a climate one. The way states and the private sector pursue these technologies, assess risks, and drive research increasingly appears focused on gaining a strategic edge. In a field where governance in lagging behind, Europe should keep track of the geopolitical implications if it is to develop effective regulatory frameworks. This compilation seeks to shift the focus away from evaluating hypothetical technologies and stylized strategic dilemmas and toward an understanding of the countries and actors that are developing, might use, and will have to govern these technologies. As such, the series is an important addition to existing analysis of climate intervention. The six articles ask what several key actors—nation-states and globally influential industries—think of geoengineering. How do they categorize the various approaches? What are their interests in having these still-hazy technological capabilities available for their own use or that of others? What are their goals and concerns? What interests and abilities do they have as developers, decisionmakers, or instigators of technologies, institutions, or governance approaches?

Overshoot and the Cryosphere: Averting Global Meltdown, Kirkham et al., International Cryosphere Climate Initiative

Exceeding the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target will bring large and in many cases irreversible effects from the Earth’s melting ice sheets, permafrost, glaciers, sea ice and polar oceans. These losses can still be limited if overshoot is kept to a minimum by deep emissions reductions followed by scaled-up carbon drawdown. The authors set out the global effects of ice loss with overshoot, exploring which ones are locked in – and how more urgent climate action can still stop or slow the worst of this damage, delivering vital evidence ahead of COP31 in Türkiye. The authors lay out out actionable solutions to bring temperatures back down from overshoot. Renewable energy and battery technologies are booming, reliance on coal and oil is slowing, and climate policies have cut emissions in many places. Successful policies now need to be scaled up to reduce emissions by at least 5% per year, starting now, reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. The authors emphasize that there can be no delay in phasing out fossil fuels to retain the possibility of bringing temperatures down in the future by drawing down carbon.

State of the Cryosphere 2026: The Cost of Overshoot, Pearson et al., International Cryosphere Climate Initiative

Overshooting the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target will bring large-scale, and in many cases irreversible, impacts from the Earth’s melting ice sheets, permafrost, glaciers, sea ice and polar oceans. This will bring a catalogue of dangerous global risks. Many are already visible today, including the devastating floods on the Nepal-China border in August that killed thousands, accelerating sea-level rise that threatens hundreds of millions of people globally and potentially irreversible disruption to the planet’s oceans and weather systems. Overshoot must be kept to the absolute minimum and temperatures returned to below 1.5°C as quickly as possible. About New Research

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