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The annual June climate talks in Bonn are taking place this year against the backdrop of an oil and gas supply crisis tied to the Iran war and deadly heatwaves in Europe, India and the Middle East. Can they produce anything substantial to ease the squeeze on economies and communities around the world?

Watchers of the negotiations say the UN climate process is under pressure to prove its worth at a time when climate action and clean energy offer an increasingly attractive alternative to the global economic and political instability brought by fossil fuel dependency.

Kaysie Brown, associate director of climate diplomacy and geopolitics at think-tank E3G, said the June 8-18 meetings “must show that the multilateral system can make a durable and politically resilient shift to support delivery [of climate action] at scale”. She added that it “will act as a key health check for the climate regime at a time of a rapidly shifting global order”.  

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There are hopes for significant progress on issues ranging from a new mechanism to support a just transition away from fossil fuels, to funding and measuring adaptation to worsening climate impacts. 

Bonn will also see the launch of dialogues on trade and climate change, on how to implement what was promised in the first stocktake of national climate plans in 2023, and on ways to shift global finance flows to support a low-carbon and climate-resilient world. 

Climate Home News doesn’t have a crystal ball, but we have done our homework. Here’s what experts expect to top the agenda at the World Conference Center by the River Rhine:

COP31 priorities

Bonn is where we will get a sense of what the joint COP31 hosts – Türkiye and Australia – want from their presidency. Signs are that they will push for a global goal on the share of final energy consumption that will come from electricity, which may be based on a target proposed by the International Renewable Energy Agency of 35% by 2035.

Watch back: Webinar – From Santa Marta to Bon, where next for the fossil fuel transition?

Other priorities already identified include energy storage, energy security and clean cooking. Türkiye has stressed reducing emissions from landfills as a priority for the “Action Agenda” strand of COP31, which encompasses government and business initiatives outside the formal discussions. Türkiye will lead on the Action Agenda, while Australia handles the negotiations.

Just transition mechanism

The Bonn negotiations are tasked with producing a draft decision on how to set up a new just transition mechanism that can facilitate a fair and orderly shift from a high-carbon world to a greener future. This decision will be forwarded for approval by countries at COP31. 

Governments agreed at COP30 in Brazil to set up what civil society has dubbed the “Belém-Antalya Mechanism” (BAM) but the details have yet to be worked out. Climate Action Network International, which has advocated strongly for the global mechanism, said it should be designed to provide decent jobs, social protection, public investment, energy access and support for affected workers and communities.  

How Belém launched the Just Transition mechanism

“If governments move decisively, the [BAM] could become one of the most significant developments in the climate regime since the Paris Agreement – helping connect climate action with economic transformation and tangible improvements in people’s daily lives,” the coalition of hundreds of green groups said in a statement ahead of Bonn.

Let’s talk trade

At COP30, after two years of trying, emerging economies finally got the overlap between trade and climate policy onto the UN climate talks agenda. Governments agreed to hold dialogues on trade at the June Bonn talks in 2026, 2027 and 2028 before a summary of these dialogues is presented at a “high-level event” in 2028.

What aspects of trade are to be discussed at the first such dialogue on Saturday June 13 is undecided. Developing-country heavyweights like China and India will likely be keen to criticise the European Union’s new carbon border adjustment mechanism, which they regard as protectionist and burdensome for their exporters. Representatives of the World Trade Organization and other trade bodies will make presentations, which governments and civil society will be allowed to comment upon.

Brazil’s call for COP trade forum gets lukewarm response

On Sunday June 14, a separate meeting of the fledgling Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade – an initiative launched by the Brazilian COP30 Presidency – will take place in a grand hilltop hotel overlooking Bonn and the Rhine. The meeting is not part of the official UN climate process or the official Bonn talks and will be more informal than the previous day’s dialogue. 

Topics that will be discussed are trade and climate adaptation, how to create a level playing field for low-carbon products, how to trade particularly polluting products and how to bridge climate and trade tools. An expert panel chaired by South Africa’s Faizel Ismail and New Zealand’s Jo Tyndall has been appointed to advise the forum.

Aligning on adaptation 

At COP30, talks on finalising a list of indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change ended in recriminations, with several Latin American governments complaining that the decision was adopted by the Brazilian presidency without their consent.

The indicators, which were developed by experts in a two-year process, were stripped down by the Brazilians on the last night of COP30 and presented to governments at the last minute as a done deal. 

New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance

Several governments and some of the technical experts have argued that many of the adopted indicators are unworkable, as they lack definitions or explanations of how they will be measured. Many indicators for important areas – like poverty reduction, ecosystems, infrastructure and food production – are missing or inadequate, they say.

Government negotiators and experts now have two years to fix the mess, through a “policy alignment process” due to end at COP32 in Ethiopia. At the Bonn talks, governments will try to agree on who will make up a new taskforce of experts to help countries put the indicators into practice and how it will operate.

Our most in-depth Bonn coverage — including most of our Bonn Bulletins from the negotiating floor — will be available exclusively to paid subscribers. Sign up today to ensure you don’t miss out.

Mission to 1.5 and Global Implementation Accelerator

After pressure from small island nations, governments at COP30 agreed to set up the Belém Mission to 1.5 and the Global Implementation Accelerator (GIA) to speed up the implementation of countries’ emissions-cutting and adaptation plans.

For the Mission to 1.5, several past and current COP presidencies are drawing up a report – scheduled to be published before COP31 – which will identify several especially impactful solutions to climate change. On June 12 in Bonn, governments and civil society will weigh in on what they want included.

Also in Bonn, governments will input into the GIA. The Brazilian COP30 Presidency’s vision is that it should drive forward the strongest climate solutions. According to COP30 CEO Ana Toni, an independent panel of experts will pre-select 10-15 solutions and a council will narrow this down to three to five each year which the GIA would then aim to speed up.

The GIA’s “added value is that it will focus exclusively on solutions with the potential to scale and generate cascading effects through high-impact exponential technologies”, she said last month. 

A person points at a stack of trays holding treated limestone, used to absorb CO2 from the air, at Heirloom’s new plant, in Tracy, California, November 9, 2023. (Heirloom Carbon/Handout via REUTERS) A person points at a stack of trays holding treated limestone, used to absorb CO2 from the air, at Heirloom’s new plant, in Tracy, California, November 9, 2023. (Heirloom Carbon/Handout via REUTERS)

Whether Mission to 1.5 and the GIA will identify the same shortlist of solutions – and how they work together – is unclear. But the GIA could become a permanent body working on the real-world “Action Agenda” of COPs.

Ruenna Haynes is the deputy lead negotiator for the small islands group (AOSIS) which pushed for these two initiatives, but she is now worried about what the COP presidencies might make of them. 

She told a recent briefing, “the last thing we want to do is to set up a process that is nothing more than a talking shop that doesn’t deliver and doesn’t go anywhere”. To avoid that, the reports of the GIA and Mission 1.5 must be linked to the wider UN climate talks process and at least discussed by governments, she emphasised. 

Finance roadmap and dialogue

COP30 left a bitter taste regarding what was expected to be one of its main outcomes: progress on how to increase climate finance through the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to $1.3 trillion”. The initiative, included in the new finance goal agreed in Baku – the NCQG – was an effort to top up the 2035 target of $300 billion a year in public finance which fell short of what developing countries wanted and an independent panel of experts estimated would be needed.

The high expectations surrounding this roadmap began to fade during 2025 as the process lacked transparency, clarity, participation and ambition. The result was a report abundant in general recommendations of actions to be taken but lacking clear commitments. Most of the suggestions mentioned are targeted at institutions outside the UN climate process, such as multilateral development banks.

The COP30 decision merely “took note of” that report. So was it the end of the road for this particular roadmap? Not yet.

From Baku to Belém and beyond: How we turn a climate finance roadmap into reality

In Bonn, an “implementation” meeting will be held to “listen to the Parties and observers on the updated work being carried out,” as a member of the COP30 Presidency team told Climate Home News. The challenge is how to ensure the roadmap doesn’t remain fine words in a document and is put into practice. It will also serve either as a good or bad example for the other two voluntary roadmaps (on deforestation and fossil fuels) that the Brazilian presidency is putting together ahead of COP31.

Also in Bonn, the Veredas Dialogue will address the opportunities and obstacles to implementing Article 2.1.c of the Paris Agreement – on making finance flows consistent with low-carbon development – and its complementarity with Article 9 on the responsibility of developed countries to provide financial resources. The limitations of the Baku to Belém Roadmap could shift the divisions between developed and developing nations to this dialogue, especially considering that 2026 is the first year for mobilising finance under the NCQG. 

More roadmaps on fossil fuels and forests

At COP30, a group of 80 countries led a failed push to kickstart a process for a global roadmap to guide the transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF). As an alternative, the Brazilian presidency proposed to draft two voluntary roadmaps: one on phasing out fossil fuels and another to end deforestation by 2030, both commitments endorsed by all countries in the COP28 deal.

In the lead-up to Bonn and after months of consultations with countries, Brazil presented an outline for the forest roadmap – which will invite countries to submit their own voluntary national roadmaps to halt forest loss. 

It will also include a menu of options to bridge the $216-billion forest funding gap. One of the key initiatives to achieve this is the new rainforest fund, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which is still rallying investors for seed funding. Brazil convened an investor meeting in Rotterdam last week, with participation from over 50 financial institutions – including BlackRock, Bank of America and Barclays – and 30 government representatives.

COP30 rainforest fund unlikely to make first payments until 2028

While not on the formal negotiating agenda In Bonn, Brazil will continue consultations on the forest roadmap at an event with governments on June 8. The final document is expected to be published later in September.

As for the TAFF roadmap, Brazil will hold an open event on June 12 after receiving suggestions from 120 countries. It is expected to be informed by the first global fossil fuel phase-out summit held in Santa Marta in April.

COP30 advisor Flávia Bellaguarda told an online briefing that the informal sessions in Bonn are meant to open a “space for dialogue” on both roadmaps, and that the more countries engage, the more international relevance the process gains.

“We managed to get the elephant into the room. Now, it needs to stay there. For that, we need to give him plenty of food so he can’t fit through the door and leave. We achieve that with dialogue and creating space for genuine exchange,” the Brazilian advisor said.

The post What to expect from the Bonn climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

Headline News:

• “Regenerative French Farms Lost Only A Third As Much As Others To Drought” • Data on drought-hit French farmland reveals that the most promising solution could be the greenest. In a study of over 1,200 farms during the 2023 droughts, early findings show that highly regenerative farms recorded an 8% drop in yields, while the others lost 22%. [Euronews]

French farm (Lucas van Oort, Unsplash)

• “Higher Gas Prices Fueling Pain At The Pentagon” • A growing list of unplanned and rising expenses is increasingly straining the Pentagon, with fuel costs emerging as one of the most significant pressures. Oil and fuel prices have surged during the Iran war. That surge could saddle the Pentagon with more than $1 billion in unplanned costs this year. [ABC News]
• “BMW iX3 Starting $5,000 Cheaper Than Comparable BMW X3” • Is the new BMW iX3 about to shake things up? Based on the key facts we’ve seen released about it, it should! The iX3 is coming in a whopping $5,000 cheaper than the comparable version of the gas-powered BMW X3. And the iX3 also offers 434 miles of range. [CleanTechnica]
• “India’s Renewable Energy Boom, Over 4.4 Million Jobs By 2030: Report” • India’s push towards renewable energy could generate over 4.4 million jobs by 2030, according to a study released by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water and NRDC India. The study forecasts rooftop solar to be the single largest employment engine. [Times Now]
• “US Will Dismantle The Ocean Observatories Initiative” • As the US seeks to halt science, the National Science Foundation announced it is “descoping” the Ocean Observatories Initiative. OOI is a vast ocean observation network that comprises more than 900 instruments deployed throughout the world’s oceans. It seems the US would rather not know. [CleanTechnica]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

• June 4, 2026

JUDGMENT RESERVED: HIGH COURT CONSIDERS ARGUMENTS CHALLENGING WEST COAST SEISMIC SURVEY APPROVAL

Civil Society Organizations and Community Members Held a Demonstration Outside Western Cape High Court and Attended Court Hearing Against TGS Geophysical Seismic Surveys Off the West Coast

On Tuesday afternoon, the Western Cape High Court concluded a two-day hearing in the ongoing legal challenge by Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative, The Green Connection and Natural Justice (the Applicants) against the State and TGS Geophysical Company UK Ltd. According to The Green Connection’s Outreach Ambassador, Neville van Rooy, “A key issue was whether decision-makers had access to, and properly considered, all relevant information before approving the project. Given its potential consequences for marine ecosystems and coastal livelihoods, this case is not only about compliance – it is about transparent and lawful decisions that genuinely serve the public interest.”

The case concerns the environmental authorisation – granted by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) and confirmed on appeal by the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment – of a large-scale offshore 3D seismic survey offshore of South Africa’s West Coast to search for oil and gas deposits. Small-scale fishers and civil society organisations previously appealed the decision, but these appeals were dismissed by the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. They approached the courts to review and set aside these decisions.

The Applicants contend that several critical issues were not adequately assessed before environmental authorisation was granted, including the risks posed by seismic blasting – high-intensity sound pulses used to map the seabed for potential oil and gas deposits – to marine species and the ecosystems on which coastal communities depend.

“The need and desirability assessment for the project focuses largely on the projected economic benefits of the project. However, what is missing is a fair assessment of the potential costs, risks and consequences for coastal communities, marine ecosystems and future generations of the oil and gas value chain, which starts with seismic surveys. It is reckless not to consider the full picture. It’s like deciding to buy a house because of the view or the size, without checking whether the roof leaks, whether the area floods in winter, or what the monthly costs will be. Responsible decision-making seeks to weigh the potential benefits against long-term risks and consequences,” adds van Rooy.

“We therefore hope the court, just like in the Searcher Geodata case, recognises that important environmental and social impacts were not adequately considered before authorisation was granted,” he says. The case also focused on whether “need and desirability” were properly assessed. This means thoroughly checking to make sure the project is needed, environmentally responsible and socio economically justified. And while there is an ongoing debate about energy security, it remains critical to note that even if there would be local production of oil and gas, it would not be cheaper but instead opens the country to vulnerability and volatile global markets. Western Cape High Court concluded a two-day hearing in the ongoing legal challenge by Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative, The Green Connection and Natural Justice (the Applicants) against the State and TGS Geophysical Company UK Ltd. According to The Green Connection’s Outreach Ambassador, Neville van Rooy, “A key issue was whether decision-makers had access to, and properly considered, all relevant information before approving the project. Given its potential consequences for marine ecosystems and coastal livelihoods, this case is not only about compliance – it is about transparent and lawful decisions that genuinely serve the public interest.”

The case concerns the environmental authorisation – granted by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) and confirmed on appeal by the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment – of a large-scale offshore 3D seismic survey offshore of South Africa’s West Coast to search for oil and gas deposits. Small-scale fishers and civil society organisations previously appealed the decision, but these appeals were dismissed by the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. They approached the courts to review and set aside these decisions.

The Applicants contend that several critical issues were not adequately assessed before environmental authorisation was granted, including the risks posed by seismic blasting – high-intensity sound pulses used to map the seabed for potential oil and gas deposits – to marine species and the ecosystems on which coastal communities depend.

“The need and desirability assessment for the project focuses largely on the projected economic benefits of the project. However, what is missing is a fair assessment of the potential costs, risks and consequences for coastal communities, marine ecosystems and future generations of the oil and gas value chain, which starts with seismic surveys. It is reckless not to consider the full picture. It’s like deciding to buy a house because of the view or the size, without checking whether the roof leaks, whether the area floods in winter, or what the monthly costs will be. Responsible decision-making seeks to weigh the potential benefits against long-term risks and consequences,” adds van Rooy. 

“We therefore hope the court, just like in the Searcher Geodata case, recognises that important environmental and social impacts were not adequately considered before authorisation was granted,” he says. 

The case also focused on whether “need and desirability” were properly assessed. This means thoroughly checking to make sure the project is needed, environmentally responsible and socio economically justified. And while there is an ongoing debate about energy security, it remains critical to note that even if there would be local production of oil and gas, it would not be cheaper but instead opens the country to vulnerability and volatile global markets.

Civil society organizations and community members attended day two of court hearing against TGS Geophysical seismic surveys off the west coast

Walter Steenkamp of Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative says, “With decisions of this scale, caution is essential because if the fish are gone, what alternatives remain for our communities? As unemployment, poverty and inequality continues to grow in the country, we, as coastal communities, want to live with dignity, we do not want to become statistics. Had all relevant information been properly considered, government decision-makers would know that the impacts on small-scale fishing communities and coastal livelihoods could be devastating.”

Melissa Groenink-Groves, Programme Manager of the Defending Rights Programme at Natural Justice says, “In addition to raising arguments about deficiencies in the basic assessment report, which informed the decisions, it was clear that the Director-General in DPMR did not have the assessment or the specialist reports before him to consider before he granted the environmental authorisation.We remain optimistic about the result and trust that Judge Judith Cloete will recognise the impacts that seismic surveying can have on the environment and coastal communities whose livelihoods depend on the ocean.”

The approval of the project, despite evidence of the potential harm to people, the environment and the climate, raises broader concerns about how energy decisions are being made and whose voices are prioritised.

“This case also highlights another question that lies at the heart of this case, and the other legal challenges we have brought: how can South Africa claim to be committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement when approximately 90% of its ocean territory is under lease for offshore oil and gas exploration? Oil and gas exploration cannot be considered in isolation. Decision makers should assess full lifecycle impacts – including environmental, social and climate consequences – rather than focussing narrowly on speculative economic benefits,” adds van Rooy.

Steenkamp concludes, “All we want is to protect our fishing grounds and our way of life from activities that could disrupt marine ecosystems or contribute to worsening climate change because it could affect our ability to earn a living and provide for our families. If the impacts on small-scale fishers and coastal communities were not properly considered, then a crucial part of the decision-making process was missing.”

Judgment has been reserved and will be delivered in due course.Walter Steenkamp of Aukotowa Fisheries Primary Co-operative says, “With decisions of this scale, caution is essential because if the fish are gone, what alternatives remain for our communities? As unemployment, poverty and inequality continues to grow in the country, we, as coastal communities, want to live with dignity, we do not want to become statistics. Had all relevant information been properly considered, government decision-makers would know that the impacts on small-scale fishing communities and coastal livelihoods could be devastating.”

Melissa Groenink-Groves, Programme Manager of the Defending Rights Programme at Natural Justice says, “In addition to raising arguments about deficiencies in the basic assessment report, which informed the decisions, it was clear that the Director-General in DPMR did not have the assessment or the specialist reports before him to consider before he granted the environmental authorisation. We remain optimistic about the result and trust that Judge Judith Cloete will recognise
the impacts that seismic surveying can have on the environment and coastal communities whose livelihoods depend on the ocean.”

The approval of the project, despite evidence of the potential harm to people, the environment and the climate, raises broader concerns about how energy decisions are being made and whose voices are prioritised.

“This case also highlights another question that lies at the heart of this case, and the other legal challenges we have brought: how can South Africa claim to be committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement when approximately 90% of its ocean territory is under lease for offshore oil and gas exploration? Oil and gas exploration cannot be considered in isolation. Decision-makers should assess full lifecycle impacts – including environmental, social and climate consequences – rather than focussing narrowly on speculative economic benefits,” adds van Rooy.

Steenkamp concludes, “All we want is to protect our fishing grounds and our way of life from activities that could disrupt marine ecosystems or contribute to worsening climate change because it could affect our ability to earn a living and provide for our families. If the impacts on small-scale fishers and coastal communities were not properly considered, then a crucial part of the decision-making process was missing.”

Judgment has been reserved and will be delivered in due course.

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The post JUDGMENT RESERVED: HIGH COURT CONSIDERS ARGUMENTS CHALLENGING WEST COAST SEISMIC SURVEY APPROVAL appeared first on The Green Connection.

Thousands of community and social service workers in Ontario, unionized under OPSEU, are currently on strike or locked out of their workplaces as they fight...

The post Workers undeterred by growing tensions in fight for Ontario’s social service sector first appeared on Spring.

When Trish Leigey’s taps started running brown and foul in late 2019, she had an uneasy suspicion about what was tainting the once-clear mountain water. 

Tests later confirmed her hunch. Bovine DNA had infiltrated drinking water supplies in rural Loganton, Pennsylvania — contamination her lawyers linked to Nicholas Meat and its practice of spreading liquefied animal waste on nearby fields.

That may not have surprised many of Leigey’s neighbors. Most of them were well aware of the desiccated animal parts occasionally strewn across local roads. Not many gave a second thought to trucks spraying a cocktail of blood, urine, water, and other slaughterhouse refuse over local farmland. But few wanted to accuse the company of wrongdoing, given that it employs over 425 people — about as many people in all of Loganton — and by some estimates processes 10 percent of the state’s beef.

Leigey, a single mother who works three jobs, decided she had to speak up, for herself, her family, and her neighbors. “I just want a simple life,” she said. “I don’t feel like I should have to be emotionally, mentally, financially, and physically exhausted because some millionaire wants to dump blood on fields because it’s a cheap way to dispose of it. It’s not right.”

 A crew cleans slaughterhouse waste that spilled along a rural road in central Pennsylvania in 2021. Courtesy of Nidel & Nace P.L.L.C.

A jury agreed and in December held the company liable for causing a nuisance and trespassing on neighboring properties by fouling their air and water. Leigey and three others who joined her in suing Nicholas Meat were awarded $145,000, a surprising victory in a state where lenient right-to-farm laws make such cases difficult to win.

Still, the verdict is not expected to change how operations like Nicholas Meat do business. There’s no compelling reason for them to.

Nicholas Meat is much smaller than giants like Tyson Foods, but it’s a big player in central Pennsylvania. What started in 1987 as a family business handling a couple dozen cattle each day bloomed over the decades into one of the county’s largest private employers. It slaughters about 1,000 cattle each day, according to the lawsuit, and has been the biggest business in a town so small it doesn’t have a traffic light. That makes the case against Nicholas Meat more than a neighborhood dispute. It illustrates how the economic pressures of industrial meat production can push environmental risks onto surrounding communities.

Across the state, waste from slaughterhouses, farms, and the like is routinely spread on fields as fertilizer. Spreading these “food processing residuals,” as the mixture is known, is legal, lightly regulated, and cheaper than transporting and treating the waste elsewhere. At least 900 farms and food-processing operations across the state participate in it. Many farms are eager to receive the waste as a more affordable way of fertilizing fields. “There is a place for it, especially as a replacement for synthetic fertilizers,” said Michael Kovach, president of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union.

The problem is scale. A small butcher, like the one Kovach works with, might kill and package a few dozen animals a day. Slaughterhouses handling hundreds or thousands generate waste at an entirely different level. The lawsuit estimated that Nicholas Meat produces at least 200,000 gallons a day, with the capacity to store 1 million gallons on-site and another 4.3 million elsewhere. Aside from mixing and aerating the slop, there is no treatment before disposal — something the state Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, said is typical.

An aerial view of Nicholas Meats, as seen in 2005 and 2026, shows the operation’s growth. Google Earth / Grist @media screen and (max-width: 767px) { .topper .topper-headings::before{width:100%;} .juxtapose-wrapper { overflow:hidde, max-width:100%; } } .juxtapose { font-family: "Basis Grotesque Pro", sans-serif !important; margin-top: 1em; } .jx-knightlab { opacity: 0; } .jx-slider { color: #f0f0f0; } .jx-controller { border-radius: 9px; color: #e6ffa0; } .juxtapose-caption { margin-top: 0.5em; font-size: 0.95rem; color: #666; text-align: center; }

Nicholas Meat, which supplies supermarket chains like Giant and fast-food restaurants like Burger King, spreads and injects its waste on fields that Eugene Nicholas and his son, Doug, own or lease in Clinton County and across the county line in places like Antes Fort. Since the state considers it fertilizer, there is little oversight on how food processing residuals are applied.

“There’s nowhere that there’s a law or a regulation involved with the type of farming that we do,” Eugene Nicholas said during the trial. His son, Doug, now largely oversees the Loganton slaughterhouse. The Nicholases and their attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Pennsylvania does not require a permit to spread food processing residuals, which includes everything from potato skins and dairy waste to slaughterhouse remains. The practice is governed by guidelines published in 1994. They do little more than require farmers to outline details like how much could be used for various crops, and warn people not to dump it near waterways or drinking water sources. 

Regulators investigate complaints of unbearable odors or polluted runoff, but DEP records dating to 2013 show people near the slaughterhouse would often wait days for a response. “There is really no oversight by anyone except residents,” said Angela Harding, a Clinton County commissioner who represents the area. “We don’t necessarily know what the long-term ramifications of this process will be.”

The lawsuit states that Nicholas Meat began spraying its waste on fields after it reopened in 2010 after a fire. It estimated that it sprays 10 million to 13 million gallons of waste over “hundreds” of acres annually. Reports from a Clinton County Conservation District employee presented during the trial revealed that the company was “way over applying blood” to farmland and the practice was “continuous for 8-10 hours a day.” One farmer quoted in a report said he couldn’t drive a tractor on his fields because they were saturated with waste. Evidence presented during the trial showed the company sprayed on barren, wet, and even snowy fields, creating the risk of runoff that could pollute other locations.

Food processing residuals from Nicholas Meat’s slaughterhouse are applied to a field near Trish Leigey’s home in Loganton. This photo was used as evidence in her lawsuit against the processor. Courtesy of Nidel & Nace P.L.L.C.

Local geography and geology add to that danger, particularly for those who depend upon wells. Springs and sinkholes are common in central Pennsylvania, and the cracks and channels in the rocky soil make it easier for contaminants to flow into aquifers and wells, said Brandon Fleming, a groundwater specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey Pennsylvania Water Science Center. He was not involved in the trial.

A 2017 U.S. Geological Survey assessment of Clinton County groundwater, conducted to establish baseline conditions ahead of potential fracking, found that more than half of 54 private wells, including Leigey’s, contained fecal bacteria, including E. coli, which appeared in about 25 percent of them. The study did not determine the source of the contamination. But evidence and testimony presented at the trial revealed that Nicholas Meat knew sinkholes dotted the fields where it sprayed and injected waste. That bloody mixture would have flowed into them and could contaminate groundwater, a groundwater expert testified.

Bovine DNA from blood or tissue, along with human fecal markers, also were detected in water samples taken from three homes near disposal sites in Sugar Valley as part of the legal case against Nicholas. Such pollutants can cause gastrointestinal illnesses resembling food poisoning, including diarrhea and severe abdominal cramps.

Read Next The new ethanol? Biogas producers are pushing livestock poop as renewable. John McCracken

Meat processing waste can expose people to viruses, bacteria, parasites, and chemicals associated with health risks ranging from gastrointestinal illness to methemoglobinemia (sometimes called blue baby syndrome) and cancer. The threat can be compounded by cleaning agents and antimicrobial drugs often found in such refuse, said Christopher Heaney, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the trial.

Even exposure to airborne particles can cause or exacerbate respiratory problems like asthma, while persistent noxious odors — which Leanna Rockey, a retired nurse who sued the slaughterhouse alongside Leigey, described as “rotting flesh and blood” — can also lead to high blood pressure, stress, and other psychological impacts.

For those living near one of these sites, those impacts are part of daily life.

Leigey said her youngest daughter, Alaina, who is now 15, suffered debilitating headaches from the stench, something her neighbors described as often inescapable. It could get so bad that they’d seal themselves indoors despite the summer heat. Many neighbors stopped hanging their clothes out to dry years ago. For Rockey, it has meant investing in a water cooler and regularly hauling clothes to the laundromat so they aren’t stained by fouled water.

“We still don’t drink our water,” Rockey said. “I never dreamt in a million years my little piece of heaven would be turned into a dumping ground.”

The two-week trial lasted longer than most cases heard in Clinton County, which has just two judges. Craig P. Miller, who presided over the case, joked about Nicholas’ “team of 950 lawyers” from the high-powered firm of Fox Rothschild descending on the rural area. Leigey skipped work and her daughter missed school, and a handful of neighbors attended the trial to provide moral support. Much of the testimony focused on whether Nicholas Meat had a right to apply the waste. Jurors deliberated for several hours before returning a verdict that Nicholas’ attorneys appealed on May 5.

Even so, the victory may do little to change the underlying system. The $145,000 that jurors awarded will help cover what Leigey and her neighbors spent over the years on bottled water, laundromat visits, and new wells. But the jury did not award punitive damages, and nothing about the verdict requires the slaughterhouse to change how it operates despite the history of environmental violations revealed during the trial.

“There’s no disincentive for him to do this,” said Chris Nidel, Leigey’s lawyer. Based on the volume of waste produced, he estimated the company saves $4,500 an hour spreading it locally rather than hauling it to a wastewater facility. “They can make that money up in less than a week.”

This 2019 image of Trish Leigey’s tap water was introduced as evidence in a trial that found Nicholas Meat guilty of trespassing and creating a nuisance through the land application of slaughterhouse waste. Courtesy of Trish Leigey

But unless state regulators pursue an investigation or adopt new rules, accountability remains elusive. Cases like Leigey’s can be difficult to prove if defendants can create enough doubt by pointing to other possible sources of contamination — another farm, a leaky septic tank, or past agricultural use. These cases are usually “a catch-me-if-you-can situation,” said Dani Replogle, an attorney with Food & Water Watch who was not involved in the lawsuit.

The same pressures play out nationwide in a $161 billion beef industry built on processing vast numbers of animals at low cost to meet high demand. 

“The more animals you have in one location, the worse the environmental problems are going to be,” Replogle said. Stricter regulation is the only way to negate that, she said. “That is just not happening. There’s a really powerful lobby standing in the way of that.”

That pressure is reinforced locally. Nicholas Meat employs a significant share of the region’s population. Neighbors may be employees, relatives, or landowners connected to the operation, leaving communities tied to the facility responsible for the pollution. That leaves few people willing to complain.

Kovach, the president of the farmers’ union, believes the case reflects a broader shift in agriculture: Livestock production and processing have become concentrated in the hands of fewer, larger operators. “What we need is a lot fewer plants that can handle 600 to 1,000 [cattle] a day and more that can handle 100 a day,” he said.

Michael Kovach, president of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union and a small-scale farmer, takes a selfie with one of his young turkeys. Courtesy of Michael Kovach

Regardless of whether the industry makes that shift, state Representative Paul Friel said the rules need to change. He has introduced legislation to tighten oversight and hold polluters more accountable because some “bad actors” are turning “farm fields into unregulated landfills.”

“There has to be a distinction between normal farming practice and industrial waste disposal,” he said. “There’s not a path forward to manage this without legislation.”

In the months since Leigey won her civil suit, the air around her house has been crisp and fresh. The pungent smell of rotting flesh has waned, but that’s largely because Nicholas Meat is spreading its waste on other fields across the Sugar Valley of central Pennsylvania.

She spent around $10,000 having a deeper well dug in 2021, and although her water now runs clear, she worries how long it’ll stay that way. Her lawyer hopes the lawsuit might inspire others to take a stand and force the industry to change, but Leigey and her neighbors wonder whose well might be the next to run rank.

“Innocent people should not have to suffer for the greed of other people,” she said. “I’m still going to keep an eye on it. Sometimes bad habits are hard to break.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Blood in the well: One town’s fight against the slaughterhouse polluting it on Jun 4, 2026.

Nearly six years ago, during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, the president signed a piece of bipartisan legislation introduced to phase out the rampant use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are potent greenhouse gases commonly used in commercial cooling equipment in grocery stores and air-conditioning systems. 

At the time, he praised the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, created in line with an international agreement to tamp down widespread use of the “super pollutant,” as something that would benefit U.S. manufacturers working to produce alternative and less environmentally harmful refrigerants. The Environmental Protection Agency would then spend the next four years under former President Joe Biden working to implement a series of rules to help enforce the law, which set the goal of phasing out production and use of the pollutants by 85 percent by 2036.

Now, Trump has reversed his position. At a White House press conference last month, he announced the administration would be loosening two of the EPA’s refrigerant rules, delaying the deadline required for grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to begin reducing their use of hydrofluorocarbons, and exempting transport companies from repairing HFC leaks in refrigeration equipment. 

Flanked by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and a handful of the country’s biggest grocery chain executives, the president assailed both the rule and the very law he signed, promising Americans the move would have no environmental consequence and bring down supermarket bills. Trump estimated that U.S. businesses and families will save more than $2.4 billion under the new rule changes, while expressing his desire to get rid of the underlying law altogether.  

“Thanks to today’s reforms, the American people have lower grocery prices, cheaper transportation of goods, lower costs of air conditioning at no detriment to our country,” Trump said.

There’s just one problem — that’s just not true. Economists and former EPA officials say the rollbacks are more likely to raise prices than reduce them. Some industry groups warn the administration’s sudden turnabout would result in ramped up demand for equipment that use the most climate-damaging HFCs, which the sector had been steadily scaling back. Even Trump’s EPA has acknowledged in an internal assessment that the rule change could achieve the opposite of its stated goal — rather than lowering costs, the supply and demand dynamics it may create could elevate them. 

Read Next Climate change has sent coffee prices soaring. Trump’s tariffs will send them higher. Frida Garza

“It just doesn’t add up. There’s just no plausible way in which relaxing these rules is going to generate any meaningful reduction in the costs of food people purchase,” said Chris Barrett, an economist at Cornell University. 

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Dollar data, which is widely considered the best breakdown of costs that go into an American consumer’s grocery bill, food retail, transport, storage, and energy costs together amount to roughly 20 percent. But refrigerants, according to Barrett, are not a meaningful slice of that share. “We’re talking about a maximum reduction of a percentage point in your grocery bill,” said Barrett, who added it’s much more likely to amount to a fraction of a percentage point. “For a consumer who’s spending $200 a week on groceries, maybe it will save you a dollar or two, at the maximum.” 

HFCs are incredibly powerful greenhouse gases that are primarily used as cooling agents in everything from supermarket freezers to slushie machines. Commercial systems using HFCs are prone to leaking, too — the EPA has estimated that U.S. supermarkets alone leak an average of 25 percent of their refrigerants every year. Though the super pollutants don’t stick around in the atmosphere for too long, their global warming potential is hundreds to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. 

The 2020 law signed by Trump initiated a gradual phaseout of production and use of HFCs in alignment with an international deal known as the Kigali Amendment. The result of years of negotiation by parties to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone pollution, the Kigali Amendment aimed to prevent up to 0.5 degrees Celsius of added warming by the end of the century, which scientists warn will have enormous consequences for agriculture and the global food system. Though Trump did not send the deal to the Senate for approval during his first term, the U.S. formally ratified the amendment in 2022 under Biden. Inside Climate News reported that a recent EPA assessment estimated that loosening the national phaseout deadlines is likely to increase emissions by 68 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2050.

Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation during the Biden administration, suspects that Trump’s cost-savings messaging around the rollbacks are nothing more than a “gimmick” to appease disgruntled voters struggling with soaring inflation ahead of midterms. Part of what Trump and Zeldin are doing with these changes, he said, is “wanting to create some grocery-price theater.” 

The administration argues that alternative materials to high-global-warming-potential HFCs are not sufficiently available, making the deadlines set by the rules for the phaseout too aggressive and expensive for food companies — costs, they say, that will be passed down to consumers. But critics have countered that U.S. businesses have spent the last several years investing billions into new refrigerants, equipment, production lines, and staffing. Chemours and Honeywell have already developed alternative refrigerants sold domestically and worldwide. Groups like the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute and the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy have also denounced the idea that the market needs more time. 

“We heard that argument, I would say, three years ago,” said Goffman. “It’s almost, by definition, arbitrary for the Trump EPA to say, ‘We’ll come along and make these changes,’ as if the EPA hadn’t already received a lot of information and worked through these issues.”

While several major supermarket chains and grocery trade groups have spoken out in support of the rule changes, the administration’s claim that savings will flow through to grocery consumers remains unsubstantiated. As they stand, the EPA’s rule amendments carry no mandates for grocers to lower their prices, and it is unclear whether companies would voluntarily use any presumed savings from the rollbacks to lower their prices, rather than relieving pressure on their own bottom lines.

Read Next Wild blueberry farms across Maine suffer as climate change upends growing seasons Sydney Cromwell, Inside Climate News

Food prices are shaped by many dynamics, but the dominant forces are demand and supply. Over the last few decades, food demand has only continued to grow, fueled by rising global populations, higher incomes, and urbanization. Supply has struggled to keep pace, and food prices have been climbing steadily as a result, punctuated by sharp spikes from recent shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran. 

But Barrett says the overwhelming persistent stressors behind steadily rising food inflation for most of the last six years has been extreme weather and climate-related shocks coupled with lagging productivity growth in food production. Americans are actively seeing this play out with skyrocketing beef prices nationwide, largely driven by persistent and prolonged droughts and heat waves that have decimated cattle herds and created severe supply shortages. “The evidence is very clear,” said Barrett. “Climate change is predictably driving the growth of supply down, and therefore driving prices up in due time.” 

By that logic, the administration’s rollback of the refrigerant rules, intended to mitigate planet-warming emissions, won’t, then, abate rising food inflation but stoke it.   

“So, if relaxing these rules aggravates climate change, and gives us more severe and more frequent episodes of extreme weather that hurts productivity in agriculture, we’re actually going to increase grocery prices down the road,” he said. “It just seems very hard to see how this administration is doing much to help relieve consumer food price inflation concerns.” 

“Who’s really benefiting from these empty promises?” he said. “We all need to start asking that question.” 

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline No, rolling back these environmental rules won’t lower your grocery bill on Jun 4, 2026.

The biggest data centre in Australia will be built in its only 100 pct net renewables grid. And it could have a major impact, including eliminating negative demand.

The post AI giant chooses Australia’s first 100 pct (net) renewable grid to build country’s biggest data centre appeared first on Renew Economy.

State commits nearly $18 million to the establishment of collection, transport and processing pathways for end-of-life solar panels and batteries.

The post Solar recycling: State tips $17.8 million into waste PV and battery collection, processing appeared first on Renew Economy.

In an exclusive interview, Tesla Energy's Asia Pacific boss Josef Tadich discusses energy abundance (read solar), the role of batteries big and small, hybrids, the EV surge and the arrival of V2G.

The post Energy Insiders Podcast: Tesla Energy boss on energy abundance, EVs, V2G and big and small batteries appeared first on Renew Economy.

Critical policies that could unlock funding for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure across America have cleared the first hurdle in Congress — and the advocates who fought for them are launching a national nonprofit to promote a model that they hope can get the bill across the finish line and achieve similar wins.

Last month, advocates for the bipartisan Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Safety Act celebrated after legislators folded several key provisions of the bill into the House’s latest major transportation law, the BUILD America 250 Act.

That bill passed out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on May 22, and will now make its way through a months-long legislative gauntlet known as the federal “reauthorization” process. If the Langenkamp provisions survive those negotiations on Capitol Hill, though, they will explicitly encourage communities across America to spend their guaranteed Highway Safety Improvement Program dollars on filling gaps in their active transportation networks for the first time.

Even better, these provisions will allow communities to fortify their bike lanes and greenways with federal money alone. In years past, the same process required an onerous local match that many governments pointed to as an excuse to neglect people outside of cars in their HSIP plans.

“There is tremendous bipartisan support in the country for making our roadways far more pedestrian and cyclist friendly,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), who introduced the legislation, in an interview with Streetsblog. “And this is especially true at a time of soaring gasoline prices. The pressure has been on for us to make sure that our tax dollars go to help people who are using every conceivable kind of transportation — including walking and bicycling.”

Recommended New Law Would Honor Legacy of Slain Cyclist Sarah Langenkamp By Helping Cities Fill Bike Network Gaps Kea Wilson March 30, 2023

They might sound wonky, but the measures outlined in the Langenkamp Act have topped many advocates’ policy wishlists for years. Proponents say they could unlock millions of dollars and catalyze countless active transportation projects that wouldn’t otherwise happen.

But they’ve been particularly urgent since the 2022 death of the mother, diplomat and cycling advocate for whom the bill is named — and the advocacy rides her family have organized in her memory every year since.

Known as the Ride For Your Life, these rolling protests have flooded D.C. streets with thousands of cyclists who turned out to demonstrate their support for Langenkamp’s namesake law and other measures to end traffic violence.

Langenkamp’s family recently established a nonprofit that will fight for similar legislation across the country. With each campaign, they’ll organize similar advocacy rides, which the family described as the cornerstone of their efforts. Raskin said these rides were essential to “mobilize focus and attention” around his legislation.

“People keep getting killed on our roads, and almost everywhere that happens, there’s a huge community of people who want to do something about it,” said Dan Langenkamp, Sarah’s husband. “I hope that we can work with those people to help channel their grief and anger into advocacy.”

Recommended Essay: Sarah Langenkamp Loved Biking. She Shouldn’t Have Died Because of It. Dan Langenkamp December 1, 2022

Of course, Ride For Your Life isn’t the first or only organization to adopt the humble group ride as a tool for policy change.

Cyclists who participated in Amsterdam’s Stop De Kindermoord protests in the 70s, for instance, helped transform the Netherlands into the biking capital of the world by laying down alongside their bikes in the street — long before the word “die-in” was common parlance.

More recently, the Magnus White Cycling Safety Act gained significant momentum after the Ride for Magnus: Ride For Your Life turned out more than 4,300 cyclists across 48 states. The provisions of that bill, which would require new cars to carry automatic braking systems capable of detecting cyclists and pedestrians, also appear in the current draft of BUILD America 250.

But Langenkamp says that other bike advocates still struggle to identify the kind of hyper-specific demands that could truly save lives on the road — or to meaningfully engage the powerful people who can fulfill those demands. And even well-intentioned organizes sometimes struggle to successfully tie “awareness” rides to their cause, he said.

With support from an organization that’s done all three, though, he hopes Ride for Your Life can help organizers conduct advocacy rides with real impact — and pass laws with real teeth.

“What we’re trying to do is affect real change on the ground by pairing our rides with legislation or policy asks,” Langenkamp stressed. “We bring in not only the families or people impacted by traffic violence, but also sympathetic legislators, the general public, and advocates to this effort. It actually works in getting things done.”

Recommended Memorial Ride For Teen Cycling Phenom Killed by Driver Hopes to Inspire National Change Kea Wilson August 5, 2024

Both Langenkamp and Rep. Raskin acknowledged that their bill alone won’t end the epidemic of cyclist deaths in America, and that group rides alone aren’t always enough to get good legislation off the ground. Even with much of the Langenkamp act included, the larger bill to which their legislation belongs drastically overfunds highways at the expense of other modes, and it will take all kinds of organizing to change that, including flipping seats in Congress itself.

“That’s really what elections need to be about,” added Raskin. “We need to have a rigorous public conversation about whether or not we are doing enough to invest in our transportation infrastructure in a way that benefits everybody in the country — and not just motorists.”

With Ride For Your Life events planned in Madison, Boston, and D.C. this autumn, Langenkamp hopes his group will continually refine their recipe for demanding change through more rides and smart organizing — and, in the process, potentially create a powerful new community of advocates on wheels.

“We all know that there are more than 100 people killed a day on U.S. roads — and it’s not just cyclists and pedestrians, it’s everybody,” said Langenkamp. “There’s no reason why there should not be more people interested in this subject … I think that we can actually help change the narrative and make this a higher priority issue, if we organize better.”

Construction of the LTESA-winning battery is set to start this year after the federal government gave the project the environmental green light.

The post Contested big battery with up to 10 hours of storage gets final green light appeared first on Renew Economy.

• A chemical in tires that’s already known to kill spawning salmon when it runs off into rivers may be harmful to humans as well, according to Yale researchers. (E360)
• If the future of transportation is privately owned autonomous vehicles and not fleets of robotaxis, traffic could grind to a complete halt. (City Lab; paywall)
• Buses and trains are a cheaper and more efficient way to move people around than cars, but transit agencies need to figure out how to compete with the fact that a car can take you exactly where you want to go. (Pedestrian Observations)
• The Vision Zero Network recommends addressing inequities in traffic stops by focusing on serious, potentially deadly offenses like speeding and drunk driving, rather than minor equipment infractions like broken taillights.
• Drivers kill thousands of people a year in places like parking lots and driveways that don’t count as roads. (Jalopnik)
• Uber is capping the amount of money employees can spend on AI after the company blew through its AI budget for the year in four months (Tech Crunch), but insists that announcement of layoffs is unrelated (CNBC).
• Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson proposed increasing bus frequency by doubling a 0.15 percent sales tax for King County Transit. (The Urbanist)
• The Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority delayed the unveiling of new train cars, and it’s unclear whether they’ll be ready in time for the World Cup. (11 Alive)
• The redevelopment of Baltimore’s Penn Station is on hold. (Banner)
• Pittsburgh transit advocates rallied in the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg demanding more funding for paratransit to help disabled residents. (WTAE)
• Contrary to the advice of experts like Donald Shoup, Cleveland is lowering the cost of on-street parking. (19 News)
• Drivers keep blocking an East Nashville bike lane. (WKRN)
• The head of Milwaukee County’s government authorized deputies to impound vehicles for owners’ reckless driving. (Urban Milwaukee)
• A California authority signed a contract to electrify 119 miles of high-speed rail. (Railway Age)
• Honolulu’s bikeshare is down to less than 500 bikes from 1,300, partly due to vandalism. (Civil Beat)
• Seattle train service was disrupted when a 70-year-old driver followed her car’s GPS onto elevated tracks. (KIRO)
• Santa Clara prosecutors issued a warrant for 49ers star Brandon Aiyuk’s arrest after he posted a video of himself speeding. (ESPN)
• Bogota, which has the largest bus rapid transit system in the world, is finally getting its metro. (High Speed)
• The UK nationalized the country’s largest private passenger train operator. (LBC)
• London cyclists are being forced to swerve around a billboard in the middle of a new bike path. (Telegraph)

China’s carbon emissions bounced back up in early 2026 as “inflexible” grid management caused the country to waste vast quantities of clean power and burn more fossil fuels instead, new analysis shows.

After recording a first full-year decline in 2025, China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy and industry grew by 2% in the first quarter of 2026, according to analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) for Carbon Brief.

China burned more coal and gas to generate electricity than in the same period a year earlier, despite building record wind and solar capacity. Instead of being integrated into the network and used, clean power equivalent to more than France’s entire electricity output for the quarter was discarded.

Coal power plants protected

Lauri Myllyvirta, CREA’s lead analyst, said the paradox was primarily caused by China’s inflexible operation of coal and gas power plants, which supply electricity through long-term contracts that remove any incentive to reduce output when cheaper solar and wind power is available.

Electricity trading between Chinese provinces, also based on annual contracts, prevents surplus renewable energy from flowing to other areas in real time, the analysis found.

Santa Marta process can confront trade protection for fossil fuels, experts say

Myllyvirta said all operators should be required to sell electricity in real time so that coal power plants would face competition from very low prices during hours of strong renewables output and have an economic incentive to cut down generation. “But that has not made a lot of progress in China,” he added.

Curtailment rates rising

The intentional reduction of renewable energy generation, a process known as curtailment, saw a significant increase in China at the start of 2026, reaching 9.2% for solar and 8.5% for wind respectively, according to Bloomberg.

Myllyvirta noted that real curtailment rates are likely to be even higher than those reported in official statistics. He added that, until tracking improves, there won’t be enough political pressure to fix the issue.

The findings highlight Beijing’s failure to make full use of its record renewables build-out to accelerate the country’s transition away from fossil fuels.

If curtailments had not risen, increased capacity means wind and solar could have generated an extra 170 terawatt hours of electricity (TWh) in the first quarter, more than satisfying the growth in power demand, CREA’s analysis found. But, instead, clean power generation rose by just 60 TWh, with wind showing almost no growth.

Electricity generation from solar (left) and wind power (right) in China, terawatt hours per 12-month period. Red: Electricity actually fed into the grid. Yellow: Generation before reported levels of “curtailment”, where some electricity is discarded due to grid congestion. Blue: Generation if the rate of curtailment had stayed constant. Source: China Electricity Council monthly data on installed capacity and utilisation; National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center data on curtailment Electricity generation from solar (left) and wind power (right) in China, terawatt hours per 12-month period. Red: Electricity actually fed into the grid. Yellow: Generation before reported levels of “curtailment”, where some electricity is discarded due to grid congestion. Blue: Generation if the rate of curtailment had stayed constant. Source: China Electricity Council monthly data on installed capacity and utilisation; National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center data on curtailment Global problem

China is not alone in under-utilising its full renewable energy potential. Curtailments have risen in countries including the UK, Australia, India, Chile and Brazil, primarily as a result of bottlenecks in national transmission systems unable to accommodate additional clean power output.

After failing to keep up with the installation of renewable generation capacity, annual investments in updating grids need to increase by around 50% by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. The watchdog said that, if power networks fail to prevent high levels of curtailments, clean energy operators risk facing significant revenue losses, threatening the investment case for renewables.

One of South America’s largest clean power generators said on Wednesday that it was putting plans for $1 billion in new renewables investment in Brazil on hold as the country’s grid operator rejected up to 25% of the power its existing projects could produce, Reuters reported.

The post China’s carbon emissions rise again as more clean power is wasted appeared first on Climate Home News.

Snowy has commissioned a report saying how important its Snowy 2.0 project is for the grid. Actually, we just want to know the size of the bill.

The post Snowy preps market for very big blowout in Snowy 2.0 costs, with response to a question no one is asking appeared first on Renew Economy.

Claims that climate scientists have abandoned their most dire scenario have been widely misunderstood. While the highest emissions pathway is now considered unlikely, evidence suggests the climate system may still be tracking toward dangerously high levels of warming.

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Figure 1: RCPs and SSPsOccasionally, climate science is big news. On 26 May, the New York Times headlined: “Why scientists retired the dire climate scenario used for over a decade”. A good story!

The Australian, true to form, went with “Climate doomsday scenarios just got a major rewrite”, and in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post it was  “The climate apocalypse? Don’t count on it”. There were a host of similar headlines.

Climate deniers and Donald Trump used an old playbook to claim scientific fraud (surprise!), but were called out, with ‘Trump twisted a climate debate beyond recognition’ and ‘Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario’.

So what’s the real story? Did scientists get it wrong, and is warming now likely to be less severe than previously thought?

As in engineering and business and government, scenarios are used by climate scientists to think about plausible alternative futures and their risks. The commonly-used climate scenarios are based on different possible trajectories for human greenhouse gas emissions and the social path humanity takes, and the consequences. And remember, scenarios in the end are simply a product of the minds that imagined them.

Fifteen years ago, four scenarios called representative concentration pathways (RCPs) were developed for the fifth IPCC assessment report in 2014, with RCP2.6 the lowest and RCP8.5 the highest. The numbers are radiative forcing (RF) values in 2100 for each scenario, where RF is the difference between the incoming radiation energy and the outgoing radiation energy in a given climate system, which is an indicator of total expected warming.

In conventional climate science terms, each one unit of RF (in watts per square metre) would in the long run be expected to result in around 0.75°C of warming. This relationship between change in radiative forcing and change in temperature is known as climate sensitivity.

RCP8.5 was sometimes called a ‘business as usual’ scenario, but this was a misnomer, and it was based on an assumption of little or no curbing of  greenhouse gases. Modellers estimated it would result in the end of warming of 5 to 6°C, with a range of 3.0 to 12.6°C.

The sixth IPCC report in 2022 focused on a modified system called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), where the scenarios more explicitly considered social, economic, and technological trends. The SSPs were again expressed as RF values. Figure 1 illustrates both the RCP and SSP scenarios as they relate to total emissions.

Now, in preparation for the modelling project for the next IPCC report due in 2029, known as ScenarioMIP,  scientists have suggested that the highest, ‘worse-case’ RCP8.5 scenario be dropped, because emissions were tracking more in line with one of the middle scenarios, RCP4.5. Hence all those headlines.

So, the ‘worse-case’ global warming case is no longer realistic. Big sighs of relief!

Not so quick. The big question in the end is not the amount of emissions but how hot it gets: the temperature. The focus on emissions in RCPs/SSPs is a bit to one side.

And on the future temperature, here’s the bomb. In a recent post, Ryan Katz-Rosene showed CERES data where the effective radiative forcing (ERF) at the moment is tracking above RCP8.5:

Effective radiative forcing and SSP scenarios.

 CERES is a NASA project that uses satellite and other data to measure the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the amount of infrared energy emitted to space. As Katz says “current forcing observations from CERES really do appear to show a high current ERF value, which (at least at this point in time) does seem to be above the mean ERF expected in RCP8.5.”

[Technically, RF measures the immediate change in energy balance at the top of the atmosphere due to an external driver, while ERF accounts for adjustments in temperature and other factors after the initial change. ERF gives a more comprehensive understanding of the climate response to these changes.]

With the actual radiative forcing higher than the worst-case scenario, all those headlines about things getting better look like a lot of hot air.

So how can actual and future warming, indicated by RF, be tracking the worst case when the emissions trajectory is a middle-of-the-road scenario? The RCP/SSP scenarios were built around greenhouse gas emissions, not around the full suite of forcings and climate feedbacks that determine what the climate system actually does in terms of heating.

The assumptions about the relationship between emissions and temperatures have been too conservative. For example, what is not getting said is that the best estimate of the climate sensitivity has been rising, with perhaps the world’s most eminent climate scientist, Jim Hansen, taking it beyond the IPCC upper-range estimate. In fact, even the current range of modelling, known as CMIP6, produces a higher climate sensitivity than previously thought.

Other factors include reduced aerosol masking, ice-reflection loss, the release of permafrost carbon, and weakening ocean sinks that are not adequately captured by the IPCC or in model assumptions about future warming. Yet they’re showing up in the real-world numbers right now.

What is happening is way beyond IPCC projections. The rate of warming has accelerated by half over the last two decades, driven by reduced aerosols emissions and diminishing cloud cover. Warming has reached 1.5°C, and with an approaching strong El Nino, 2026-27 is likely to be around 1.7°C. Earth’s Energy Imbalance, an indicator of future warming, has doubled in the last 15 years and continues to increase, suggesting a warming trend of 2°C by 2040 is likely. Even global warming of 1°C, a threshold already passed, risks triggering some tipping points. At 1.5°C, six out of 10 studied climate subsystems already show large-scale abrupt shifts across multiple models.

Katz says: “We have such large uncertainty by end of century on climate sensitivity and carbon feedbacks, such that we can’t preclude mean warming of up to 4°C by 2100 even if we successfully pursue an emissions pathway resembling that in RCP4.5. So, again, if sensitivity or carbon feedbacks are not in our favour, there are plenty of scientific findings based on RCP8.5 which could turn out to be right on the mark in meteorological terms later this century, despite being way off on anthropogenic fossil emissions assumptions.”

Any reputable climate scientist over a drink at the bar will tell you that by far the majority of the human population would likely not survive 4°C. And that sounds like a worst case to me.

On Facebook, western Victoria is nothing but a hotbed of anti-renewables activism, but there are new efforts to unite farmers and developers to a single cause.

The post From wool, to cropping, to solar: How renewable energy can “grow the agricultural pie” appeared first on Renew Economy.

Plans to build a massive new big battery with up to four hours of storage has secured development approval from state government authorities.

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A record-breaking month of renewable energy generation has been set in three different states across Australia, as big batteries continue to smooth prices.

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China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions grew by 2% in the first quarter of 2026, after a rise in the amount of “wasted” wind and solar power.

The country used more coal and gas to generate electricity than in the same quarter a year earlier, despite a record amount of new wind and solar capacity being built.

While the strait of Hormuz crisis has boosted China’s focus on energy security – including through clean energy and electrification – its electricity system is failing to keep up.

The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that, while China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry increased in the first part of 2026, they remain below the peak in early 2024.

Other key findings for the first quarter of 2026 include:

• There was a 23% year-on-year rise in wind-power capacity and 33% for solar.
• There was also a sharp rise in the amount of wind and solar output being “wasted”, as it was not accommodated by the current electricity system.
• As a result, emissions in the power sector increased by 4% year-on-year.
• Power-sector CO2 would have been flat without the rise in “wasted” wind and solar. 
• Emissions in other sectors of the economy grew by 1%.

The key reason for “wasted” wind and solar generation was the inflexible management of coal power plants and power grids, not a lack of grid infrastructure.

In the first quarter of 2026, China’s energy system also began to adjust to the surge in oil and gas prices due to the blockade of the strait of Hormuz.

This continued through April and May, with sharp reductions in oil imports and oil-based chemicals production, as well as the share of gas in electricity generation.

However, the inability to make full use of new wind and solar power plants left China more exposed to the closure of the strait of Hormuz, by increasing the need for other fuels.

This exposure could become more acute if the “super El Niño” that is forecast for later this year limits the electricity output of hydropower, while fossil-fuel supplies remain tight.

Nevertheless, the Hormuz crisis could result in China following a lower-CO2 trajectory than previously expected, if key policies in its 15th five-year plan are fully implemented.

Emissions plateau continues

Recent analysis for Carbon Brief showed that China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry had been “flat or falling” for nearly two years.

The latest analysis points to a rise of 2% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, as shown in the figure below. For now, however, emissions remain below the peak in March 2024.

China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, million tonnes of CO2, rolling 12-month totals until March 2026. Source: Emissions are estimated from National Bureau of Statistics data on production of different fuels and industrial products, China Customs data on imports and exports and WIND Information data on changes in inventories, applying emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, IPCC default emission factors for metals process emissions and annual emissions factors per tonne of cement production until 2025. Chemical industry process emissions are estimated from fossil fuel use, subtracting carbon embedded in products. Sector breakdown of coal consumption is estimated using coal consumption data from WIND Information and electricity data from the National Energy Administration. The consumption of petrol, diesel and jet fuel is adjusted to match quarterly total sales reported by Sinopec.

In previous quarters, emissions had fallen in almost every sector of the economy, with the exception of the coal-based chemicals industry.

The latest quarter saw more widespread increases, with the power sector by far the largest source of emissions growth, as shown in the figure below.

Year-on-year change in China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, for the period January-March 2026, million tonnes of CO2. Source: Emissions are estimated from National Bureau of Statistics data on production of different fuels and industrial products, China Customs data on imports and exports and WIND Information data on changes in inventories, applying emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, IPCC default emission factors for metals process emissions and annual emissions factors per tonne of cement production until 2025. Chemical industry process emissions are estimated from fossil fuel use, subtracting carbon embedded in products. Sector breakdown of coal consumption is estimated using coal consumption data from WIND Information and electricity data from the National Energy Administration. The consumption of petrol, diesel and jet fuel is adjusted to match quarterly total sales reported by Sinopec.

Emissions from other sectors were relatively stable in aggregate, with some rising and others continuing to decline.

Coal consumption in the chemical industry continued strong growth, increasing by 20%, but showed no change in trend after the closure of the strait of Hormuz and surge in oil prices.

(This is contrary to some commentary arguing that the closure of the strait of Hormuz has resulted in a marked increase in the output of China’s coal-chemicals industry.)

The apparent consumption of oil products rebounded in January-February, driven by transportation, but declined slightly in March as oil prices surged.

Emissions from the cement and steel industries continued to fall, as real estate investment contracted another 11% in the first quarter of 2026, following a 17% reduction in 2025. Cement production fell 7% and crude steel output by 5%.

‘Wasted’ wind and solar power

After falling in 2025, power generation from coal and gas increased by 4% in the first quarter of the year.

Power demand grew at 5.2% and hydropower generation increased 9%. Under these circumstances, the record growth in solar and wind power capacity in 2025 should have covered demand growth and pushed fossil-power generation down.

The trend was accentuated in March, as power demand grew just 3.5%, hydropower output increased 9% and yet fossil-power generation increased 4.2%.

The reason for fossil-power generation growth was a sharp drop in the electricity output per unit of installed capacity for both solar and wind power, known as the “capacity factor”.

If capacity factors were stable, the increased solar and wind capacity would have been expected to result in 160 terawatt hours (TWh) of additional clean-power generation during the first quarter, compared with the same time last year, with nuclear and hydro bringing the total to 170TWh. This would have comfortably exceeded the 120TWh increase in power demand.

However, the actual increase in clean-power generation was just 60TWh, with wind showing almost no growth.

While wind power capacity grew by 23% from the first quarter of 2025 to the same period in 2026, an increase of 120GW, the average capacity factor fell from 27% to 22%, a reduction of 18%. This implies that power generation from wind only grew 1% year-on-year. In the case of solar, capacity grew by 33%, but the average capacity factor fell by 11%, resulting in 18% growth in solar-power generation.

It is normal for solar and especially wind capacity factors to vary year-to-year due to weather conditions, but the fall this year was an extension of a longer trend. The average capacity factors of solar and wind have fallen by 19% and 10%, respectively, from 2022 to 2025.

A quarter of the fall in capacity factors over the three-year period is explained by the increase in reported curtailment. This refers to the amount of electricity that is effectively “wasted”, or curtailed, because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.

Nor can the remainder of the fall in capacity factors be explained by the change in weather conditions, as both wind and solar conditions improved on a national-average basis from 2022 to 2025.

In the first quarter of 2026, approximately half of the drop in wind capacity factor and a quarter of the drop in solar capacity factor was explained by weather conditions, implying that the rest is due to increased curtailment resulting from inadequate grid management and integration. 

One clear symptom of increased curtailment is that in January-February, both solar and wind conditions were actually better than last year, but capacity factors still fell.

The fact that capacity factors have fallen significantly more than would be expected based on reported curtailment and weather conditions indicates that a lot of curtailment goes unreported, either because it is excluded from the statistical definition, or because there are gaps in reporting.

Market participants have long noted that actual curtailment is much higher than reported in official statistics.

Official data on curtailment only includes “system reasons”, while excluding some lost generation linked to market trading, grid-connection conditions and other “special” causes.

The figure below shows actual electricity generation from wind and solar plants (dark blue), the amount that would have been generated if reported curtailment had not taken place (light blue) and the level expected if the rate of curtailment had stayed the same (mid-blue).

In total, wind and solar could have generated an extra 170TWh of electricity in the first quarter of 2026, if the rate of curtailment had not gone up in the preceding years. This is more than the total power generation of France over the same period.

Electricity generation from solar (left) and wind power (right) in China, terawatt hours per 12-month period. Red: Electricity actually fed into the grid. Yellow: Generation before reported levels of “curtailment”, where some electricity is discarded due to grid congestion. Blue: Generation if the rate of curtailment had stayed constant. Source: China Electricity Council monthly data on installed capacity and utilisation; National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center data on curtailment; utilisation at constant curtailment projected by fitting a regression model between historical utilisation data and weather data from NASA Power and CFSv2 for power plant locations taken from Global Energy Monitor data.

The largest reductions in capacity factors, after controlling for variations in weather conditions, came from Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Liaoning. In these northern provinces, the heating season is a challenging time for grid managers due to inflexible operation of plants that provide both heat and power.

More broadly, the key reason for curtailment is inflexible grid management. Flexible operation of coal and gas-fired power plants could very substantially increase the amount of solar and wind power the grid can accommodate.

Yet currently, coal-fired power generation is largely operated via medium- and long-term contracts to supply fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices, meaning there is no incentive for adjustments in output to make space for solar and wind.

Similarly, electricity trading between provinces is predominantly contracted annually, preventing the variable output of solar and wind from being transmitted between jurisdictions in real time.

These issues have a clear impact on the amount of wind and solar that is curtailed. For example, power-system modeling carried out for the year 2023 indicates that flexible power-grid operation would have essentially eliminated the need for curtailment.

The government has also recognised solar and wind curtailment as one of the central challenges of the energy transition.

Recent policies have called for increased inter-province trading and improved flexibility of coal-power plants as the solutions, implicitly recognising these as key issues to address.

Recent large increases in storage capacity, including pumped hydro and batteries, should have improved the integration of wind and solar into the grid. But there is a lack of incentives for storage operators that limits the benefits the system can derive from the technology.

The government has implicitly recognised this and called for establishing electricity pricing that enables energy storage to “participate fairly”.

Meanwhile, China’s new renewable-pricing rules, which shifted existing solar and wind plants to selling electricity on the market, rather than being compensated directly by the grid operator, does not seem to have reduced curtailment so far.

Most provinces only finalised their plans for implementing the policy in late 2025, which left little time for the market and operators to adapt.

China is aiming to build a “new type power system”, capable of integrating large amounts of wind and solar into the grid by 2027. In the meantime, the government has also called for “reasonably pacing” utility-scale “new energy” capacity additions to match the pace at which provinces think they are able to improve the “regulation capacity” of their grids.

How the Hormuz crisis is affecting China’s energy sector

China’s energy system has started, since March, to adjust to the surge in oil and gas prices triggered by the closure of the strait of Hormuz. There have been sharp reductions in oil imports, the share of gas in thermal power generation and in oil-based chemical production.

The consumption of gas fell overall in March, even as consumption in the power sector increased. The power sector fuel mix shifted from gas to coal, but the increase in overall thermal power generation still pushed gas use up in the sector.

High gas prices had already been straining household finances before the current crisis. Millions of households were shifted from coal stoves to gas-based heating as a part of efforts to tackle air pollution during the past decade. However, the gas-price subsidies created to enable this shift have expired in recent years, leading to a rise in heating bills.

China’s oil imports started falling sharply immediately after oil prices surged, with net imports falling even further as exports were restricted. The fall has continued into May, with shipments falling by over 40% year-on-year in the first three weeks of the month.

In the first quarter of the year, state-owned oil major Sinopec reported oil product sales up 4.8%. Apparent consumption of oil products had increased 5.5% in January-February, but fell -0.3% in March, indicating an early impact of the price surge, although the late timing of the Chinese New Year also had an effect.

Electric vehicles have continued to gain market share in 2026, reaching 53% of vehicle sales in April, up from 47% a year ago.

Electricity demand for EV charging grew over 50% year-on-year in March. The large number of plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road means that drivers can switch from petrol to power quickly when there is more of an incentive to do so.

Moreover, 24% of highway trips during the 1 May holiday were made by EVs, even though they only make up 15% of all registered cars. This shows that EVs tend to be driven more than average, making a bigger dent in oil use than their share in the fleet would suggest.

Crude oil processing volumes fell by 2% in March and 6% in April, after growth in January-February. Plastics output growth moderated in March and turned into a decline in April.

The increase in oil prices has boosted the profitability of the highly carbon-intensive coal-to-chemicals industry. There has also been speculation that the industry would have forcefully increased output in response to the Hormuz crisis, enabling China to cut back on oil use. The industry was, however, already operating at high capacity utilisation before the current crisis, reported at an average of 87% in the first half of 2025. This means there was little headroom in the sector to raise output in the short term.

Coal use in the chemical industry increased 19% in January-February and 22% in March, showing a rapidly rising trend, but no step change after the start of the crisis.

The global fossil-fuel crisis is also affecting China’s clean-energy industry through overseas demand. Exports of solar, batteries and EVs recorded 56% growth year-on-year in the first quarter, reaching $55bn. This increase was partially driven by front-loading of shipments ahead of changes to tax rebates to solar and battery exports at the end of March, but the value of exports also grew 38% in April, an indication of strong underlying demand.

Implications of the crisis for China’s transition

The oil-and-gas crisis represents an opportunity for both clean energy and coal. The economics of electrification and clean-energy production, as well as of domestic coal production, have improved dramatically as imported fossil fuels have become more expensive.

At least as importantly, the closure of the strait of Hormuz and the resulting global fossil-fuel crisis closely mirror Chinese policymakers’ long-standing concern about reliance on seaborne fossil fuels. This is likely to reinforce their focus on energy security.

The previous fossil-fuel crisis, in 2021-2022, led to a new wave of coal-power plants, coal mines and coal-to-chemicals plants being built in China.

This time around, any expansion in coal mining is expected to be limited, both by the government’s “anti-involution” drive, which aims to stem harmful price competition, as well as by the carbon constraints in China’s climate goals.

Domestic coal production fell in the first four months of the year, despite a rise in oil and gas as well as coal prices. Rising coal prices will reduce the profitability of coal-fired power generation, at least for the next few months.

The perceived need for further new coal-power projects is also limited by the fact that, after record additions in 2025, there was still another 206GW of coal-fired capacity under construction in January, due to large volumes of permitting during the previous five years.

The energy regulator recently called on provinces to “strictly limit” the addition of new coal-power plants and other “regulating” power capacity in areas with sufficient firm capacity.

There is also a ceiling on the upside for coal in the current crisis, because gas plays a limited role in China’s energy system. This leaves little space for replacing gas with coal.

The exception is the coal-to-chemicals industry, which can replace oil and gas, albeit at the cost of very high carbon emissions. As a result, investment in the industry will likely get a further boost, even though the economic incentive is lower than it may seem.

While crude oil prices for delivery this summer have increased by more than $40 per barrel since the start of the year, 2030 prices are only up $5. This is a more relevant benchmark, given that a new coal-to-chemicals plant will take several years to build and commission.

The coal-to-chemicals expansion will also be limited by the new system to control carbon emissions. In particular, the requirement for local governments to compensate for carbon emissions from new industrial projects by closing down existing capacity, if these controls are implemented effectively.

Since the previous fossil-fuel crisis, the concept of energy security has become broader, encompassing clean energy and electrification, rather than being limited to coal and fossil fuels. This shift is also clear from how state media has been covering energy security in the wake of the war on Iran.

As such, the oil-and-gas crunch is likely to speed up the electrification of transportation and buildings. It also strengthens the case for “green fuels”, referring to green hydrogen and synthetic gaseous and liquid fuels produced from it, which are an important priority in the new five-year plan.

Solar and wind also become more attractive, economically and politically, as a result of the crisis. The upside may be limited by the dominant narrative that they have grown faster than the grid can manage, rather than being limited by institutional constraints. Nevertheless, they will benefit from fossil fuels – including coal – becoming more expensive and volatile.

Still, curtailment has become a key issue affecting the pace of China’s energy transition. It both reduces the immediate benefits of clean energy and undermines further investment in clean capacity, by increasing investment risks and cutting into returns.

The flipside of the current rise in curtailment is that when the installed wind, solar and energy storage capacity is put to full use, the supply of clean energy will increase substantially.

As noted, a key priority for the government in the next few years is to build a “new type of power system”, capable of integrating large amounts of variable renewable capacity.

The balance between how much the current crisis benefits coal or clean energy will depend on implementation of key climate and energy provisions in the 15th five-year plan.

If power-system reforms that benefit solar, wind and storage are implemented, while carbon-emission controls limit the expansion of coal-to-chemicals, then China is likely to follow a lower-CO2 emission trajectory than expected before the crisis.

About the data

Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, as well as from industry data provider WIND Information and from Sinopec, China’s largest oil refiner.

Electricity generation from wind and solar, along with thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.

Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power were taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.

Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power-sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data. 

CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2021. The CO2 emissions factor for cement is based on annual estimates up to 2024.

For oil, apparent consumption of transport fuels – diesel, petrol and jet fuel – is taken from Sinopec quarterly results, with monthly disaggregation based on production minus net exports. The consumption of these three fuels is labeled as oil product consumption in transportation, as it is the dominant sector for their use.

Apparent consumption of other oil products is calculated from refinery throughput, with the production of the transport fuels and the net exports of other oil products subtracted.

Estimated non-energy use of fossil fuels is subtracted from total chemical industry fossil fuel consumption, and process emissions are calculated based on fossil fuel consumption with carbon retained in products subtracted. Emissions from the incineration of plastics are based on a peer-reviewed estimate of plastics incineration in 2022, combined with growth rates in the overall power generation from waste-to-energy plants. Metals industry process emissions are calculated using industrial output data and IPCC default emission factors.

Reported curtailment, and capacity utilisation in the absence of reported curtailment, is calculated as the complement of the “offtake rates” (利用率) reported by National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center monthly by province for solar and wind.

Total curtailment is estimated by comparing solar and wind capacity utilisation predicted based on weather conditions, and in the absence of curtailment, to reported utilisation. Utilisation is predicted by fitting regression models to reported monthly utilisation and weather conditions in 2020-2023.

Weather data used for predicting utilisation are hourly wind speed, temperature, solar irradiation and humidity at solar and wind power plant locations in each province from NASA Power and CFSv2. Locations are taken from Global Energy Monitor data.

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