G1. Progressive Green

Food and agriculture will be under the spotlight at the upcoming round of global climate negotiations in northern Brazil.

Representatives from nearly every nation will gather from 6-21 November in Belém, a regional capital and gateway to the Amazon, with most countries far off target to deliver deep cuts to carbon emissions — the only way to halt the worst impacts of catastrophic climate change.

Some food and climate groups hope this thirtieth annual Conference of the Parties (called COP30) summit can be a game changer for reforming food systems, which emit around a third of all a third of all greenhouse gases.

After all, Brazil — which holds the presidency of COP30 — has a reputation for skilled diplomacy, and has made agriculture objective number three on the conference agenda.

At home, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has lifted millions out of hunger, and pledged to protect endangered ecosystems in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah. Brazil also has clout as the world’s eleventh largest economy, as well as an agriculture powerhouse where multi-billion-grossing beef and grain exporters rub shoulders with the state-supported family farms that produce most of the nation’s food.
 
But advocates for ambitious food system transformation will have their work cut out in Belém, where they will run up against entrenched opposition led by Brazilian agribusiness, which has been preparing its lines of attack throughout 2025.

The agriculture sector is under pressure to clean up. It produces a cocktail of harmful and potent climate-heating emissions  — from the nitrous oxide emitted by fertilizers, to the rising volumes of methane released from the digestive tracts of the world’s 3.5 billion cows, sheep, and goats. 

The United Nations’ foremost climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made clear that climate action must include swift reductions in emissions from food and farming. Big Meat, in particular, is in the spotlight as the source of nearly a third of methane emissions.

Campaigners have described slashing agriculture’s methane pollution — which outstrips that of the oil and gas industry —  as “the fastest and most cost-effective lever available to slow warming within our lifetimes.” The best way to pull this “emergency brake,” according to peer-reviewed science, is to consume less red meat — particularly in rich and middle-income nations.

But in Belém, agribusiness will insist that it is, in fact, the solution to climate change. To keep cuts to production off the table, delegates from Brazil, the United States, and other livestock producer nations will downplay agriculture’s impacts, argue for technical solutions that cannot reliably reduce emissions, and cast binding regulation of their industry as a threat to human health, prosperity, and well-being. 

In a move welcomed by civil society and policymakers, the Brazilian COP presidency has championed “Information Integrity” at this summit to fight back against the tidal wave of climate mis- and disinformation. But agriculture’s greenwashing is harder to spot.

Here are eight arguments to be ready for in Belém:

Regenerative Agriculture Served with: grass-fed beef, regenerative grazing, carbon farming, carbon positive

Free from universally accepted definitions or standards, the term “regenerative agriculture” — which broadly references environmentally friendly farming practises that can lead to increased storage of carbon in healthy soils — is a firm favourite in the net zero plans of polluting firms like McDonalds and Cargill.

It’s the subject of no fewer than 27 panels scheduled for the climate summit’s “Agrizone Pavilion” (one of several spaces holding themed events on the sidelines of the official negotiations), which is hosted by Embrapa, Brazil’s public agriculture research body, and sponsored by both Nestlé and pesticide firm Bayer.

The cropland practices loosely grouped under “regenerative,” such as organic and no-till farming, have benefits that do include long-term storage (or sequestration) of carbon in soil, along with boosting biodiversity.

However, a growing body of science has found that carbon sequestration in soil can offset at best a tiny fraction of the agriculture sector’s emissions. 

The beef industry, in particular, likes to insist that regenerative cattle grazing and manure management can significantly lower the sector’s carbon emissions — which are roughly equivalent to the entire nation of India.

 
At past climate summits, organizations like the Protein Pact, a lobby group for the U.S. meat industry, have stressed the environmental gains mady by flagship ranches to suggest that intensive cattle farming is synonymous with sustainability and nature protection.
 
 But meat’s outsized contribution to methane emissions leaves scientists in no doubt of the industry’s impacts — and how to tackle them.

Grass-fed beef hamburgers for sale at a Costco in Los Angeles, California. (Credit: David Tonelson/Alamy)

In a 2024 survey of 200 experts, published by the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Program, 85 percent agreed that “animal-sourced” foods must reduce in the diets of rich and middle-income nations to bring about a 50 percent drop in  livestock’s greenhouse gases by 2050, to stay within the climate goals agreed in Paris.

Note: Touting regenerative credentials also holds financial promise for agribusiness. Recent changes to the Paris Agreement have opened carbon markets to “soil-based credits,” which are now being traded under UN markets.

Tropical Agriculture Often paired with: regenerative agriculture, climate-neutral, carbon offsets

Brazil’s “special envoy for agriculture,” Roberto Rodrigues, will come to COP30 ready to persuade negotiators that his country can take lead in “low-carbon tropical agriculture.”
 
This Latin American twist on regen ag is used to suggest that warm-region soils and tree planting can absorb enough carbon to offset the methane generated by Brazil’s 195 million head of cattle. 
 
In the lead up to the summit in Belém, major agriculture polluters have invoked tropical agriculture to make “carbon neutral” claims. Among them is Brazilian meat giant JBS, which had greater methane emissions in 2024 than ExxonMobil and Shell combined. 

The scientific underpinning for this idea comes largely from Brazil’s state research agency Embrapa. Its “low-carbon” and “carbon-neutral” beef labels are now central to the industry’s marketing.

But independent research shows soil cannot absorb enough methane to offset livestock emissions in the region. “Emissions from livestock can be reduced,” says leading soil scientist Pete Smith. “But any claims that soil carbon could be increased to anywhere near the extent to offset emissions in preposterous – and not supported by the evidence.”

Other experts question elements of Embrapa’s methodology, saying it does not sufficiently account for the fact that most Brazilian pastures are created by clearing forest, which releases far more CO₂ than new trees can recapture.

Cattle grazing on cleared tropical rainforest land in the Amazon region, Para, Brazil. (Credit: Jacques Jangoux/Alamy)

Claudio Angelo, the chief communications officer at Climate Observatory, a coalition of climate NGOs, agrees that Brazilian farming has made improvements that can sequester carbon on a limited scale — by recovering degraded pasture, managing grazing, and integrating agro-forestry into cattle farms.

But to call the sector highly sustainable based on this would be “intellectual dishonesty,” he recently told Bloomberg.

Angelo points to the wider context. Brazil’s methane footprint has risen 6 percent since 2020, and agriculture drove over 74 percent of its total emissions in 2023. The expansion of croplands and cattle operations has also driven the loss of 97 percent of native vegetation over the past six years.

The cheerleaders of tropical agriculture insisting that their sector can continue to grow are out of step with the scientific consensus. A September 2025 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal One Earth found that current food system trends present an “unacceptable risk,” and prescribes changes to diets in all scenarios to stay within a livable climate, and to avoid tipping points past which major ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs cannot recover. 

“To align with the Paris Agreement, absolutely huge reductions in feed production (including grazing) and animal-sourced food  production would be required in this region,” said Harvard University climate and food systems scientist Helen Harwatt in an email. A “massive  reduction in beef consumption” is also needed, she said, noting that Brazilians eat 20 percent more beef than Americans, even though the U.S. is the world’s leading beef producer. Harwatt contributed to the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Program’s report.

Yet if a recent COP30 position paper from the Brazilian Agribusiness Association (ABAG )  is anything to go by, the trade group will be promoting its industry at the summit as a “low-carbon agriculture leader” — and make no mention of the need to reduce livestock.

Special Envoy Rodrigues has gone a step further. He is fronting an industry call for allowing Brazil, and countries like it, to factor carbon sequestered in soil through tropical agriculture into their emissions reporting.

In response to questions, Embrapa stated in an email that “emissions related to deforestation are embedded in the carbon calculator over a 20-year timeframe,”  adding that “the protocols [Low-Carbon and Carbon-Neutral Beef] are scientifically grounded and follow metrics recognized by the best available science.”

No Additional Warming Often associated with: climate neutrality, GWP*, tropical agriculture

The subject of how to best measure methane emissions is likely to come up frequently in Belém, as nations with long-standing, large, and highly polluting livestock industries attempt to lock in methodologies that work in their favour.

Their tool of choice is GWP* or “global warming potential star.” Used at a global scale, GWP* can be a helpful metric for comparing the growth in emissions of short-lived heat-trapping gases like methane with the impacts of long-lived CO2. The controversy arises when GWP* —  which is not used by the IPCC — is applied by a nation or corporation to itself. This leads to dramatically understating the emissions of large meat and dairy producers, while small increases elsewhere are punished.

Promoters of GWP* include powerful U.S., Australian, and Latin American industry groups along with the Oxford University academic Myles Allen, who first developed the metric. This year, for the first time, its proponents include governments — most recently New Zealand, which just enshrinedGWP* into its domestic climate goals and thereby weakening its target for cutting methane pollution.

Called an “accounting trick” by critics, and dubbed “fuzzy methane maths” in a 2021 Bloomberg Green headline, researchers warn that adopting GWP* will disguise rising methane emissions, allowing big polluters to claim “climate neutrality” without cutting herd sizes or methane output.
 
Environmental scientist and economist Caspar Donnison likens GWP*-backed claims of climate neutrality to “claiming you’re fire-neutral because you’re pouring slightly less petrol on the blaze.”

A global group of climate scientists has publicly advised against adopting GWP* as a common metric on the grounds that it “creates the expectation that current high levels of methane emissions are allowed to continue.” 

Oxford’s Allen, meanwhile, has called COP30 an “opportunity to “reframe climate policy” around alternative metrics like GWP*. In response to a request for comment, Allen said in  email, “I think corporate and national climate claims should be informed by their impact on global temperature. I don’t mind how people calculate this, provided they do so accurately.”

Agribusiness trade groups in Brazil have picked up the baton, adding GWP* to their tropical agriculture toolkit, and Embrapa’s support for the metric is growing.
 

Bioeconomy Often paired with: circular economy, biogas, biofuels, socio-bioeconomy

Much like regenerative agriculture, the term “bioeconomy” encompasses varied ideas for transforming production and consumption to make economies run in harmony with nature. 

The term has taken on an altogether different hue, however, since it become a byword for green growth in Brazil and Europe, embraced by both agribusiness and government. Critics say they have hijacked the term to put a green spin on the expansion of destructive farming.

In the hands of  corporations such as Cargill and dairy firm Arla, bioeconomy has morphed into a byword for a set of controversial, supposedly “green” fuels, such as so-called “biofuels.” Typically, biofuels refers to liquid fuels produced from organic materials (termed “biomass”), ranging from corn-based ethanol, a gasoline additive, to biodiesel from soybean oil. In the U.S., animal fats from meat processing plants are another major feedstock for biofuels, according to the Energy Information Agency.

Environmental scientists and campaigners have strongly critiqued biofuels because their production at scale requires using vast large tracts of land for monoculture crops of sugar cane and soy, which can lead to deforestation and biodiversity loss, as well as create competition with food crops.

The nations in the Global Biofuels Alliance, launched at the September 2023 G20 Summit in New Delhi, India, are among the world’s biggest food exporters and fossil fuel producers. Standing from left, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, U.S. President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed. (Credit: Brazil Presidency)

Meat giants such as JBS, as well as food multinationals like Cargill, are also expanding into biogas: methane gas captured from sources such as manure or decomposing crop waste. Advocates for biogas are attempting to brand it as “clean” energy that may become a viable substitute for natural gas-fired power. However, it’s not yet clear whether biogas can be produced at industrial scale, with one recent analysis suggesting it may replace no more than seven percent of gas-fired power.

Worse still, since biofuels are produced from organic matter, they still release greenhouse gases when burned. An October study by advocacy group Transport and Environment found that for every unit of energy biofuels create, they emit 16 percent more CO2 than the fossil fuels they replace, due to the associated impacts of farming and deforestation.

As a major producer of ethanol from sugar cane, Brazil will bet big on bioenergy at the climate summit. According to a leaked document seen by The Guardian,  Brazil plans to champion a global pledge to quadruple what it insists are “sustainable fuels,” chiefly biofuels and biogas.

We Feed the World Often paired with: efficiency, emissions intensity, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), nutrition, “Brazil is only just off the hunger map”

The meat industry put this claim front and centre in its lobby plan for COP28 in Dubai, and it’s likely to make a comeback this year at COP30, particularly around Brazil’s anticipated launch of the “Belém Declaration on Hunger and Poverty”. 

Agribusiness will employ this argument to suggest that any attempt to regulate the industry in line with science-based recommendations to safeguard the climate will make the poorest go hungry.
 
This claim hides an inconvenient truth: The planet already produces 1.5 times more food than it needs, yet hunger persists because of waste, poverty, and inequality — exacerbated by rising climate impacts.
 
 Hunger is solved by politics and good policy, not production. While animal agriculture remains vital to healthy diets in some parts of the world, research shows that expanding industrial meat and dairy has done little to improve food security in low-income nations. Instead it is fuelling over-consumption in wealthier countries, where excess intake of meat (especially red and processed meats) has been linked to ill health.

Around 50 percent of maize and 75 percent of soy goes to animal feed, not people. Climate scientists and the EAT-Lancet Commission have stressed that cutting meat production in high-income countries would free up vast areas of cropland for grains and pulses that could feed many more people, with far fewer emissions.
 
 A 2016 study showed that it is smallholder farms that supply the majority of food in the regions that are home to the highest numbers of people going hungry, producing more than 70 percent of calories in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. 

When Brazil exited the UN hunger map — rightly celebrated as a huge step forward — its success came not from agribusiness exports, but from the state’s local food policies and investments in small farmer support programmes.

The EAT-Lancet Commission — which looked how to feed all the world’s people a healthy diet without breaching planetary boundaries — has proposed a diet richer in whole grains, legumes, and seeds for protein. The commission’s landmark 2019 report suggested that people should eat an average of 50 percent less red meat in all but two regions of the world. 

Other studies have confirmed that reduced consumption of meat would be a global win-win-win by reducing climate-heating pollution, conserving biodiversity, and improving human health.

As climate changes’s impacts worsen, the real challenge, according to University of Texas professor Raj Patel, lies in how to channel funds to more resilient and diverse “agroecological” systems, which receive a fraction of the financial support provided to industrial agriculture, rather than by expanding factory farming under the guise of feeding the world. 

Big Ag Is Progress and Development Often coupled with: economic development, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Scan Brazilian radio and social media during the summit, and you may hear the catchy strains of “agronejo”, a genre of country music with twists of hiphop and electronic pop, which paints agriculture as synonymous with wealth, prosperity, and power.
 
 Agronejo is just one example of the agribusiness industry’s powerful cultural PR campaign in Brazil, where it has it’s own TV channels, programmes and publishers, as well as dedicating resources to “build empathy for producers” among children in Brazilian schools via textbooks, audiobooks, and teacher resources (a tactic also used in Ireland and the U.S). 

As the climate conference approaches, JBS is sponsoring COP30 content in major Brazilian newspapers including Valor Economica, El Estadao, and El Globo.

This line of mythmaking casts agribusiness as a modernising force throughout the global South. In JBS’ recent announcement about expansion into Nigeria, it stated that its factories will create jobs and bolster food security — claims disputed by local food system experts.

By contrast, small producers in the global South are framed as unhygienic,  and much more polluting than industrial-scale meat and dairy operators, which claim their carbon emissions are much lower per kilo of milk or meat produced.   

This arguments subtly shifts the emphasis from the sector’s total greenhouse gas emissions — where high and upper-middle-income nations sit at the top of the list, far outweighing the  10 percent of pollution produced by “inefficient” low-income nations,

Evidence suggests that agribusiness claims about wealth and jobs also ring hollow. A 2025 study showed that even though farmers in the global South produce 80 percent of food consumed globally, profits from agriculture are disproportionately captured by governments and companies in the global North, via high-profit activities such as the marketing and distribution of food.

In the run-up to COP30, which small farmers are billing “the agribusiness summit”, Brazilian civil society is holding a People’s Summit that will compete with Big Ag’s shiny PR for tech-driven solutions. Focused on an alternative vision of agriculture, the People’s COP will champion locally-grown and sourced foods, and the power of Brazil’s ecologically-minded smallholder farmers to nourish Brazil’s population.

Efficiency Is Enough Often paired with: emissions intensity, innovation, new technologies, producing “more with less”, “We feed the world”

Global North dairy farms, which send large numbers of delegates to climate summits, are going to press home the argument that its portion of climate crisis can be fixed through efficiency, not transformation.

By producing “more with less,” they say, carbon emissions can fall even as supplies of milk and butter continue to grow. They argue this is possible thanks to technologies such as feed additives that reduce dairy’s  “emissions intensity”: the amount of methane created per pint of milk produced.

On close inspection many of the bold carbon reduction targets announced by dairy firms are of intensity, not absolute pollution, which continues to grow. The latest industry figures show, while these groups touted emissions intensity reductions of 11 percent from 2005 to 2015, emissions of the dairy industry rose overall by 18 percent  — due to herd sizes growing by nearly a third.

Danish dairy giant Arla, New Zealand’s Fonterra and China’s Mengniu are among those to have set reduction targets for their Scope 3 (supply chain) missions on an intensity basis only.

Unless limits are placed on production — which agriculture is hellbent on avoiding at all costs— there is no guarantee that more efficient production will bring down pollution.

That’s because making something more efficient usually means you use more of it, not less — a phenomenon known as the Jevons paradox. Dairy companies in Ireland, for example,  pollute less per unit of milk, but they have done so by scaling up production. And the money saved was ploughed into increasing herd sizes. The result? According to the latest available figures dairy’s methane emissions continue to rise. 

It’s a testament to the power of the livestock lobby that the “solutions to climate change” which took centre stage in the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s long-awaited 2023 “Pathways to lower emissions” livestock report were … “technology” and “voluntary efficiency”, which would allow the sector to keep growing. This conclusion ignored the peer-reviewed science that consistently comes down in favour of prioritizing government policies that shift diets away from animal products, with technology playing a minor role.

Fertilizer and pesticide giants — which are also under pressure to lower both climate-heating emissions and environmental impacts use efficiency-based arguments too, such as touting drones, precision spraying, and chemical-coated seeds as green solutions.

However, agrochemicals are key drivers of ecological destruction and the pollution of soil, air and water, and are most heavily used to support production of damaging monocrops, which are at the core of industrial animal agriculture systems.

While small efficiency improvements matter, experts warn they are no substitute for absolute cuts in methane, fertilizer, and land use change. “Efficiency” may be good for business—but not for the planet.

Fossil Fuels Are the Real Problem Often paired with: “Agriculture is a solution,” “Agriculture is unfairly villainized,” “We are making great strides in reducing our emissions”

When challenged on agriculture’s climate impacts, farm lobbies have a history of deflection: pointing the finger of blame elsewhere.

Ahead of the climate summit, Latin American trade bodies are trying to get themselves off the hook by shifting the blame onto the fossil fuel industry. One major trade group has bemoaned how recent conferences have had a “distorted” focus on agriculture over “obvious sources of emissions”.

For its part, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) — which represents large producer countries — has declared that its goal in Belém will be to “remove [agriculture] from the dock of the accused.” In response to a request for comment, Lloyd Day, the Deputy Director General of IICA, said that while he would not characteris agriculture in this way, he felt agriculture had been unfairly cast as a “villain” at climate discussions, such as the annual climate summits, when the sector was really “part of the solution.”

Theis tactic of deflecting to other industries has also been used by agriculture trade groups and industry allies in the U.S, which have argued that the sector’s contributions to the climate crisis pales in comparison to fossil fuel-guzzling sectors like transport. It mirrors classic “delay and distract” techniques used by the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, framing farming as a scapegoat even food systems consume at least 15 percent of all global fossil fuels in the forms of fertilizers, transport, plastics, and feed.

While coal, oil, and gas remain the largest contributors to climate change, emissions from food systems alone, if left unchecked, have the potential to take the world over 1.5 C. 

The food system now has the unhappy mantle of being the largest driver of all other planetary boundary transgressions. ranging from forest destruction and the collapse of wildlife populations to the pollution of fragile fresh water supplies.

Agriculture also surpasses fossil fuels in its methane and nitrous oxide pollution — which together are responsiblefor more than a third of global warming to date.

By claiming fossil fuels are the “real culprit,” the industry diverts attention from its own footprint and stalls meaningful reform. Climate experts counter that tackling global warming requires confronting both sectors with equal ambition.

JBS, PepsiCo, McDonalds, and the New Zealand Government did not respond to requests to comment before going to press.

Additional reporting by Gil Alessi and Maximiliano Manzoni

The post Look Out for These 8 Big Ag Greenwashing Terms at COP30 appeared first on DeSmog.

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the main U.S. advertising trade association, is under fire from climate campaigners after naming a senior Shell executive as its new chair.

The appointment of Dean Aragón, CEO of Shell Brands, comes as the global oil and gas company has scaled back its climate commitments over the last two years, dropping plans to reduce oil production and scrapping a key 2035 emissions target.

Climate campaigners say the move, which was first reported by Adweek, raises questions about the ANA’s commitment to climate pledges forged prior to the Trump administration’s moves to gut climate policies and aggressively expand fossil fuels.

The role of ANA chair confers a prominent voice on ad industry issues.

“The ANA is made up of companies whose business models are fundamentally threatened by climate change, which is caused by Shell’s products — from Piedmont Healthcare and the American Heart Association dealing with diseases caused by extreme heat, or Mars and Anheuser-Busch struggling with higher commodity prices caused by flood and drought,” said Duncan Meisel, director of Clean Creatives, an organisation that works to cut ties between advertising agencies and the fossil fuels industry 

“Shell has recommitted to producing more oil and gas, and less clean energy. Their marketing has been the subject of lawsuits, regulatory action, and widespread consumer backlash across the world. Appointing the CEO of Shell’s marketing as chair is a guarantee of the ANA losing credibility in the eyes of regulators and organisations with sustainability agendas worldwide,” Meisel told DeSmog.

Aragón is the CEO and vice-chairman of Shell Brands International AG — a Shell subsidiary that develops and protects the Shell trademark, for licencing to Shell companies and third parties, according to the Conference Board.

He is also global vice-president of branding for the entire Shell group, leading the development of overall brand strategy, brand policies and standards.

Aragón replaces Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at Proctor & Gamble, who had led the ANA since 2016.

The ANA was a founding member of Ad Net Zero USA, an initiative launched in 2023 during the previous Biden administration to “decarbonise advertising operations” — meaning reducing the amount of emissions generated by producing and displaying adverts. At the time, ANA CEO Bob Liodice called the reduction and measurement of carbon “a top priority for our industry.”

The ANA published research last year showing major brands reduced their operational emissions by as much as 38 percent by using sustainable media planning. The ANA represents brands that spend more than $400 billion annually in marketing and advertising, according to figures on the ANA’s website.

The ANA and Shell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Top Shell Marketing Executive to Chair US Ad Industry Trade Group appeared first on DeSmog.

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently announced five proposals he intends to fast track to defend our economy from the hostile Trump administration, live up to Canada’s climate commitments, and demonstrate respect for Indigenous rights.

Do the projects live up to these aspirational values? Let’s take a closer look.

Among the first five projects is an expansion of the LNG Canada shipping facility close to Kitimat, B.C. The federal and provincial governments also recently approved the Ksi Lisims LNG proposal located in the territory of the Nisga’a First Nation in northwest British Columbia.

While the elected Nisga’a council is in favour of the Ksi Lisims project, many of their Indigenous neighbours are not – including those along the contentious 800-kilometre Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline route planned to transport fracked natural gas from close to the Alberta border. Almost half of the First Nations who participated in environmental assessment process for Ksi Lisims opposed the project.

Gitanyow hereditary chiefs are blockading the construction of the PRGT across their territory. Other Indigenous Nations including the Haida and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs oppose the LNG terminal and PRGT pipeline, originally approved in 2014 to transport gas to a liquifying facility on Lelu Island at the mouth of the Skeena River. 

Malaysian LNG giant Petronas cancelled that project in 2017 due to fierce opposition from First Nations and collapsing global prices. Almost 10 years later a similar confluence of Indigenous opposition and an impending market glut looms over one of Carney’s signature infrastructure projects.

It turns out embracing gas exports does not bode well for defending Canadian economic sovereignty, avoiding climate catastrophe or respecting free, prior and informed consent of First Nations.

Who’s Buying?

Ksi Lisims and Canada LNG completion five years from now would coincide with a 40 percent increase of global LNG capacity being built between now and 2029, accompanied by declining demand from some of our largest potential customers.

Japanese LNG consumption peaked in 2014 after the Fukushima disaster and has since dropped 25 percent due to recommissioned nuclear capacity. Japan, Europe and South Korea account for half of global LNG consumption and these markets could see a 20 percent decline in demand by 2030 as cheaper generation displaces pricey gas shipments. Chinese imports of LNG are already down 12 percent from 2024 due to surging deployment of renewables and increasing pipeline supply from Russia.

What about emerging economies? India generates only two percent of electricity from natural gas, rapidly being displaced by cheaper wind and solar sources already providing six times more capacity. According to a recent report from the Institute for Energy Economy and Financial Analysis, “In FY2025 31 gas-fired power plants — with a combined capacity of nearly 8 gigawatts (GW) and representing 32 percent of [India’s] total gas power capacity — did not generate any electricity at all, rendering them stranded assets.”

Pakistan got badly burned by ballooning LNG prices after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and instead aggressively embraced renewables. Imports of Chinese solar panels increased fourfold since 2022. Distributed energy is now so pervasive in Pakistan that local grid sales have dropped 10 percent and the country is now reselling LNG cargos they are contractually obligated to purchase, but do not want or need.

Who Owns Ksi Lisims?

Carney campaigned on standing up to a hostile Trump administration and defending our economy. But Ksi Lisims will hardly help to “build Canada strong.” The floating LNG export facility will be constructed in South Korea using non-Canadian steel and labour. Majority ownership will be held by Western LNG based in Texas with financial backing from Wall Street giant Blackstone. Blackstone’s CEO was a prominent donor to the 2024 Trump campaign and remains a key advisor to a president who continues to threaten Canada’s sovereignty.

The American-based Atlas Network sought to undermine Canada’s adoption of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to further fossil fuel approvals like Ksi Lisims. Now that UNDRIP is (slowly) being implemented, LNG insiders have suggested that making First Nations the public face of support for new oil and gas infrastructure has become the “magic sauce” for project approvals.

“This is a shapeshifting innovation in the position of industry,” Hayden King, executive director of the Indigenous-led public policy think tank the Yellowhead Institute told DeSmog in 2022. “First Nations are going to assert and enforce their own versions of consent. So the smart play for industry now is to get on board and attempt to manipulate what that consent means. I think that’s what you’re seeing happening now.”  

Climate Confusion

The LNG industry enjoys asserting that there is somehow a climate benefit from extracting and burning vast amounts of natural gas. To be clear, there is no compelling evidence that LNG is significantly displacing coal as a fuel source. Even if that was true, analysis from researchers at Cornell University shows that after accounting for unavoidable methane leaks, LNG has a larger greenhouse gas impact compared to equivalent coal generation.

Backers of B.C. LNG also boast that emissions will be lower than other projects due to plans to compress and cool the fracked natural gas with vast amounts of renewable energy. How vast? Fully completed, Ksi Lisims and LNG Canada would require the equivalent of the entire generating capacity of the newly completed and highly contentious Site C dam, which could otherwise supply clean electricity to 500,000 B.C. homes or power far less polluting industries.

Building a $3 billion transmission line – likely paid for by B.C. taxpayers – would only be completed years after Ksi Lisims becomes operational. In the meantime it will be powered by burning natural gas releasing 1.8 megatonnes of CO2 per year, equal to about 40 percent of the all home heating emissions in the province.

Rather than building Canada strong, Ksi Lisims and other LNG projects could undermine relations with many B.C. First Nations when our country is allegedly committed to reconciliation and can ill afford unnecessary conflicts with Indigenous peoples.

Canada’s climate goals and our national sovereignty are likewise undermined by another extractive fossil fuel project constructed overseas and bankrolled by American interests instead of investing in shovel-ready Canadian-built renewable solutions. Given the looming global glut, LNG export expansions are also at risk of failing financially and saddling the taxpayer with sunk costs and expensive subsidies.

Other than all that, well done Mr. Carney.

The post Why Is Canada Fast-Tracking LNG? Not for Economy, Climate or Reconciliation appeared first on DeSmog.

Major meat and dairy producers emit more greenhouse gases than the nation of Saudi Arabia, the world’s number two oil producer — emissions that rival those of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, according to a new analysis published Monday. 

The assessment, which was produced by the nonprofit research firm Profundo and four environmental advocacy groups, estimates that the 45 largest meat and dairy corporations in the world were responsible for more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions in 2023. Only eight other countries worldwide emit more. 

About half the total came from just five companies — JBS, Marfrig, Tyson Foods, Minerva Foods, and Cargill. Together, those five firms emit 480 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent gasses annually, more than Chevron (454 million tons), Shell (429 million tons), and BP (366 million tons), the analysis shows.

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The report was released in advance of next month’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. At last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, representatives from big agribusiness corporations, meat and dairy trade groups, and lobbying firms representing the sector turned out by the hundreds. 

“As governments head to COP30 in the heart of the Amazon — an ecosystem devastated by global meat giants — scientists are clear that a failure to bring down agricultural emissions will torpedo us well past the Paris 1.5°C red line,” said Shefali Sharma, global agriculture policy expert for Greenpeace Germany, in a statement provided to DeSmog. Greenpeace Nordic was one of the four advocacy groups that contributed to the report, alongside Foodrise, Friends of the Earth U.S., and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. 

The meat and dairy sector’s biggest climate impacts are due to methane, a greenhouse gas that warms the planet 80 times faster than carbon dioxide when measured on a 20-year timescale. Methane, which cattle and other ruminant livestock burp up as part of their digestive process, accounted for more than half of meat and dairy’s climate pollution, according to the report. The 45 companies emit more methane than the entire European Union plus the United Kingdom, the assessment found.

But carbon dioxide is a significant factor too, mostly thanks to the the razing of forests for grazing and feed crops. Manure management practices also contribute to a sizable footprint from nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that’s about 270 times more potent than CO2. 

JBS was by far the biggest polluter among the 45 companies, responsible for 24 percent of the group’s total estimated emissions. The Brazilian meatpacking giant, which slaughtered an estimated 20.8 million cattle in 2023, had greater methane emissions than ExxonMobil and Shell combined that year, according to the report.

In 2021, JBS announced a commitment to reach net-zero by 2040, running a full-page ad in The New York Timesthat insisted “anything less is not an option.” But the company has since backtracked on the pledge, while gearing up for what it projects will be a 70 percent increase in global animal protein demand by 2050. 

“It was never a promise that JBS was going to make this happen,” JBS global chief sustainability officer Jason Weller told Reuters earlier this year. 

Though carbon dioxide emissions can linger in the atmosphere for thousands of years, methane is a comparatively short-lived greenhouse gas. It warms the planet for only about a decade before breaking down — which means ambitious methane cuts have the potential to rapidly cool the planet.

Some experts liken methane cuts to an “emergency brake,” what the United Kingdom-based environmental nonprofit Climate Crisis Advisory Group calls “the fastest and most cost-effective lever available to slow warming within our lifetimes.” 

Cows Burp Up Tons of Methane

Agriculture is the number one source of global methane emissions, due in large part to belching by ruminant livestock like cattle, who can burp up well over 150 pounds of methane per year. That adds up to a major per-capita impact in countries like the U.S. that consume much more beef compared to the global average. A study published Monday in Nature Communications found that the carbon footprint of meat consumption in America’s cities alone is roughly equivalent to that of domestic oil and gas combustion. 

University of Michigan professor Benjamin Goldstein, a lead author on that study, said dietary changes could be as significant as putting solar panels on your house — a similar impact at just a fraction of the cost. 

“If you just cut out half of your beef consumption and maybe switch to chicken, you can get similar amounts of greenhouse gas savings depending on where you live,” Goldstein said in a statement. “If we can get people to use this type of study to think about how diets in cities impact their environmental impacts, this could have huge effects across the United States.”

High- and upper-income countries currently consume 77 percent of the global meat supply, compared to just 2 percent in lower-income nations. But climate-minded dietary changes can still be a politically fraught topic in wealthier nations like the U.S., where meat tends to be a culturally important staple —  and industry-funded narratives often pour fuel on the culture war fire.

In a section of their report devoted to solutions, the four nonprofits outlined strategies that go beyond appeals to individual-level choices, including shifting public money away from animal agriculture and policies that make meat and dairy firms bear the financial cost of their own pollution. But above all the report emphasized the importance of transparent emissions accounting — the kind of information that helps the public connect the dots.

More than 40 percent of Americans incorrectly think eating a more plant-oriented diet wouldn’t help climate change at all, or aren’t sure that it would, according to research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

JBS, Marfrig, Tyson, Minerva, and Cargill had not provided comments by press time.

The post Top Meat and Dairy Companies Have Same Climate Impact as Biggest Oil and Gas Firms appeared first on DeSmog.

Mississippi sides with Drax as Gloster now faces more pollution. The historic denial of Drax's permit is overturned as the state chooses profits over people.

The post Statement: Mississippi Fails Its People first appeared on Dogwood Alliance.

Despite considerable public funding, aggressive ad campaigns, and optimistic pronouncements by politicians of various stripes over the last few years, there were no major project announcements at Canada’s annual carbon capture expo this year. 
 
Neither were there any announcements related to Pathways Alliance, the signature carbon capture and storage project (CCS) of Canada’s tar sands producers.

The fourth edition of the annual Carbon Capture Canada expo, held September 23 to 25 in Edmonton, appeared to have fewer panel discussions and keynotes, did not feature speakers from the tar sands consortium Pathways Alliance, and did not include addresses from federal government representatives, as was the case in previous years. 

Though employees of Environment and Climate Change Canada and Natural Resources Canada attended, representatives of the federal cabinet were conspicuously absent. This is significant because it is the first carbon capture expo to be held under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new government, and Carney has been aggressively pushing for energy infrastructure development to counteract the tariff war instigated by U.S. President Donald Trump.

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In 2021, the Pathways Alliance — a consortium of six major Canadian tar sands oil producers — proposed a massive carbon capture and storage project for Northern Alberta. The project would connect more than 20 tar sands production facilities via a 400-kilometer network of carbon dioxide pipelines to a massive subterranean storage facility in the vicinity of Cold Lake, Alberta. 

The initial estimated cost of the project was $16.5 billion, with Pathways Alliance expecting the federal government to cover up to 75 percent of the total cost. Pathways has claimed the project will be able to store 1,100 megatonnes of carbon dioxide and has advocated for it by arguing it will help “decarbonize” Canada’s emissions-intensive tar sands heavy crude oil.

However, these claims have been challenged by environmentalists, climate scientists and energy economists. Among other criticisms, experts have derided the Pathways project as nothing more than greenwashing, noting that downstream emissions from continued tar sands production would exacerbate climate change. As previously reported by DeSmog, Pathways Alliance scrubbed their website of practically all content before Canada’s anti-greenwashing laws came into effect in June 2024.

Pathways Project Not on Carney’s List

Prime Minister Carney stated on September 11 that the Pathways plan for reaching net zero by expanding CCS infrastructure was a “potentially viable project,” and also said that the government would accelerate work on it. However, Carney did not include Pathways among the first five projects referred to Canada’s new Major Projects Office, a federal government initiative to fast-track infrastructure development deemed in the national interest.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said last month that the federal government would fast track the Pathways plan for reaching net zero by expanding its CCS project. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

LNG Canada Phase 2, which aims to double liquid natural gas (LNG) production at the Kitimat British Columbia facility, was the first project on the list.

Carney indicated federal support for a new West Coast pipeline could be tied to progress on the Pathways carbon capture project, which the Globe and Mail described as “stalled.” Championed by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, the new proposed oil pipeline does not have a private sector project sponsor, nor a planned route, and has been rejected by the government of British Columbia as well as Indigenous communities in northern B.C. 

Because of the lack of a private sector partner, Smith recently declared that Alberta would sponsor the project, despite concerns the proposed pipeline may not be financially viable. 

Pathways’ latest public statements do not mention their CCS project. On October 1, the group issued a statement supporting Danielle Smith’s announcement that the government of Alberta would be the chief proponent of the proposed West Coast pipeline. The brief statement made no mention of carbon capture whatsoever, though it did describe the so-called ‘Emissions Cap’ and ‘West Coast tanker ban,’ as well as the Federal Impact Assessment Act, as barriers to future development that must be addressed.
 
 In a potential indication of major project retooling, new advertisements from Pathways Alliance, recently spotted in Alberta, are moving away from references to carbon capture. An electronic billboard photographed by DeSmog in Edmonton stated “This is not just a pipeline. It’s a stronger economy.” 

The ad was part of a national campaign that launched in mid-September, part of what Pathways describes as their “commitment to communicate on behalf of the oil sands and the many Canadians who work in the industry.” Whether this is indicative of fundamental changes to Pathways’ proposed multi-billion-dollar carbon capture project isn’t clear.

Pathways Alliance’s new ads, like this one spotted in Alberta in September, are moving away from references to carbon capture. Credit: DeSmog Pathways Project Missing from 2025 Conference

Pathways Alliance officials did not speak at the carbon capture expo’s strategic conference, and there were no speakers representing any of the six major tar sands producers who compose Pathways Alliance either. In 2024, by contrast, a Pathways official provided a keynote address on the first day of the convention. DeSmog found only one representative from one Pathways tar sands company — Imperial Oil — participating in an “executive dialogue session” taking place in the convention hall, separate from the main strategic conference.

The first full panel talk of the convention was “Navigating CCUS Uncertainty in a Global Market: An Opportunity for Canada?” The discussion was centered on a recent decision by the Trump administration to cancel $3.7 billion USD in funding for carbon capture and other so-called emissions reduction technologies.

Whether or not this means the Pathways project is dead in the water isn’t clear.

Pathways Alliance did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.

Though the project was listed on the prime minister’s September 11 major projects announcement, it was only mentioned in a secondary section of projects believed to be potentially transformative, but which need additional development. 

However, the statement from the Prime Minister’s Office referred to the project as “Pathways Plus,” perhaps reflecting the idea that the original Pathways project will be modified to include pipelines for conventional fossil fuel transport purposes. The government’s Pathways Plus description suggests both an “Alberta-based carbon capture, utilization, and storage project and pipeline that will substantially reduce emissions” with additional energy infrastructure that “will support a strong conventional energy sector while driving down emissions from the oil sands.”

The government also said in the announcement that Pathways Plus “creates the prospect of facilitating low-carbon oil exports from the Alberta oil sands to a variety of potential markets.”

A backgrounder on the major projects under consideration by the federal government doesn’t provide much more detail, other than to say that the Major Projects Office would “develop a strategy to build the Pathways project which would reduce upstream emissions from the conventional energy sector, while catalyzing private investment in additional energy infrastructure that would support a strong conventional energy sector while driving down emissions and emissions intensity from the oil sands.”

The Deception Behind ‘Low-carbon Oil’

Experts have long argued that carbon capture projects such as Pathways are misleading because any reduction in upstream emissions would be compromised by the downstream emissions that would be a consequence of continued oil production.
 
The term “low-carbon oil” — widely used by Carney in describing Pathways and other fossil fuel projects — is an inherently misleading industry term whose continued use by the prime minister is a serious concern to experts. Speaking to CBC News, Memorial University political scientist Angela Carter stated, “Low-carbon oil is not a thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s an impossibility.” 

It is also unclear how federal support for the new oil pipeline Smith is proposing will encourage the Pathways Alliance tar sands producers to move ahead with their CCS project, since Pathways has already been promised government support for initial capital costs, and demand for Canadian oil seems insufficient to merit additional pipeline infrastructure.

High operating costs — not start-up capital — are likely the Pathways project’s chief stumbling block, according to the Globe and Mail. Both the federal government and the government of Alberta had already indicated they would cover more than 60 percent of the project’s capital costs. However, a major report from the Institute for Financial Analysis and Energy Economics published earlier this year revealed that Pathways would be a subsidy-dependent financial risk with limited revenue potential.

How exactly the federal government plans to “catalyze private investment” given the already considerable promises of additional public subsidy has not been explained in any of the government’s recent statements pertaining to Pathways. The government of Alberta’s recent statement that it would champion new pipeline development — because no private sector proponent could be found — suggests that the fossil fuel sector isn’t interested in new energy infrastructure projects nor in various government incentives.

The Pathways idea — which was originally called Oilsands Pathways to Net Zero —dates back to 2021, and the alliance’s partners announced its signature carbon capture project in June of 2022. According to timelines laid out in the first iteration of the Pathways Alliance website, the project aimed to develop its carbon transport and storage system by 2030.

In September 2023, DeSmog reported that Pathways had not consulted with Cold Lake First Nations about their carbon capture project, a task central to getting it produced. Chief Kelsey Jacko was an invited guest of that year’s carbon capture expo, and made the announcement during a panel discussion. At the time, Pathways was engaged in a nationwide advertising campaign that included misleading advertisements on public transit that insinuated the CCS project was in development.
 
 Prior to that, Pathways’ news release from September 16th reiterated the ‘Build Canada’ manifesto in another open letter to Mark Carney. Though Pathways Plus is mentioned once in the letter, carbon capture is not.

The post No Federal Ministers or Major Announcements at Leading Canadian Carbon Capture Expo appeared first on DeSmog.

This story was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

For centuries, farmers in Melendugno, a town located at the tip of southern Italy’s boot heel, built stone walls to mark the boundaries of their fields, shield their crops from the winds blowing out of North Africa, and divide farmland from pasture.  

Today, those same ancient stones stand watch over a changed landscape of parched olive groves, tall metal fences, and barbed wire. Beyond the fences, framed by a few remaining ancient olive trees, sits the Melendugno Reception Terminal — the western endpoint of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). 

TAP is a natural gas pipeline, 878 kilometres (545 miles) long, that forms the final segment of the Southern Gas Corridor, a pipeline bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, and a key part of the European Union’s effort to lessen its dependence on natural gas from Russia.

TAP connects with the Southern Gas Corridor at Kipoi, Greece, on the Turkish-Greek border. From there, it crosses northern Greece to Albania, then Albania to the floor of the Adriatic Sea, and comes ashore at Melendugno, where it links to Italy’s gas network.

The Trans Adriatic Pipeline carries liquid natural gas westward from Kipoi on the Turkey-Greece border to Melendugno in southeastern Italy. An additional section is under construction to extend it across the country to northern Italy. Credit: Sabrina Bedford

The pipeline has a transport capacity of 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year, with plans to double this to 20 billion by 2027, even though Europe’s decarbonization strategy includes a gradual reduction in gas use from 2030 onwards.

Despite assurances from its backers that TAP is committed to minimizing leaks, data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite has revealed a worrying trend: Since the pipeline opened in 2020, concentrations of planet-heating methane — the main component of natural gas — have been increasing near key infrastructure points along its route. 

Massimo Morigi, a veteran satellite data analyst and member of the Italian environmental association Cova Contro, used Sentinel-5P readings to analyse methane levels at three sites before and after TAP became operational in 2020: two compressor stations in Greece and Albania, and the pipeline reception terminal in Melendugno.  

Morigi compared methane levels at the compressor stations in May 2018 and 2019 to levels in June 2023 and 2024; and levels at Melendugno in May 2018 and 2019 to the same months in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Morigi found that since the gas began to flow, there have been significant increases in methane concentrations in proximity to all three locations, jumping from 1,800-1,900 parts per billion (ppb) before 2020, to often exceeding 2,000 ppb since.

The Sentinel-5P averages methane levels across 5–7 kilometers (about 3-4.5 miles), so it cannot show the exact origin of the emissions.

That’s why Cova Contro co-founder Giorgio Santoriello made his way to the Melendugno terminal in late August, building on visits in the spring and summer of 2024, equipped with a FLIR Gx320 thermal imaging camera. The optical sensors in this advanced monitoring device analyse how light interacts with gases — enabling it to spot methane plumes with pinpoint accuracy.

This is far from an academic exercise. Slashing methane pollution — a powerful driver of the climate crisis — is a key target of the European Union’s Green Deal climate policy. The EU introduced new rules last year that strengthened existing methane regulations in Italy and other member states by requiring fossil fuel companies to be more transparent about their emissions — and take rapid action to plug leaks in their pipes.  

While Melendugno’s operators say they are complying with the new rules, Cova Contro and other environmental groups say they have detected significant emissions from various vents at Melendugno, which raises questions over how much more methane may be leaking from TAP.

“This technology allows us to capture a range of environmental impacts that traditional monitoring often misses,” Santoriello said.

Why Methane Matters

While much of the discussion around the climate crisis has focused on carbon dioxide (CO2) — the main driver of fast-rising average global temperatures — alarm bells are also ringing over surging concentrations of atmospheric methane. 

While methane breaks down rapidly — taking 20 years to dissipate, compared to hundreds to thousands of years for CO2 — it traps approximately 80 times more heat. Methane emissions have been responsible for about a third of the rise in average global temperatures since pre-industrial times.   

Methane emissions are also a public health risk, said atmospheric chemist Sandro Fuzzi, research director at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate-National Research Council in Bologna. That’s because they can trigger the formation of ground-level ozone, “a toxic gas responsible for roughly half a million deaths worldwide each year.”

Methane levels around the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, then under construction, in Salento, Italy between 2018 and 2019. Dataset: Sentinel-5P VCH4, analysis by Massimo Morigi Methane levels around the Trans Adriatic Pipeline in Salento, Italy in 20204, four years after the Trans Adriatic Pipeline became operational. Dataset: Sentinel-5P VCH4, analysis by Massimo Morigi

Methane pollution can also contain benzene and other toxic substances, as well as particles of soot so tiny they can lodge in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, contributing to illnesses like asthma, heart disease, strokes, and cancer.

In 2016, the Lega Italiana per la Lotta contro i Tumori (Italian League for the Fight Against Cancer) warned that TAP would put nearby communities at higher risk of health problems, including an increased rate of cancer.

Under the stricter disclosure requirements in the EU’s new methane rules, gas importers are required to report on the methane emissions associated with their supply chains from 2025 onwards. By 2027, they will be required to contract only with suppliers that comply with EU methane standards. 

The law also mandates an end to routine venting or flaring of methane, a common practice across the industry. Operators are supposed to limit methane releases to emergencies, such as sudden, dangerous increases in pipeline pressure that could lead to explosions. 

Notably, the regulation targets unintended methane leaks, termed “fugitive emissions.” Operators are supposed to implement regular “leak detection and repair” programs, and leaks must be repaired within five to 15 working days — the bigger the leak, the faster it must be stopped.

Leaks Detected 

The Melendugno Reception Terminal is fenced off and well-equipped with surveillance cameras, making close-up readings hard to get. During his first visit in spring 2024, from a position on a nearby street, Santoriello detected three worrisome methane flares at the site, but was too far away to collect much data about them.

Santoriello returned to the terminal for a closer inspection two months later, on a sweltering 40-degree Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) summer day. Finding shade beneath some dried-out trees near the terminal, he carefully selected a vantage point that would get him as close as possible to the facility and aimed the FLIR Gx320.

The thermal camera revealed small but constant methane leaking from two TAP vents, and a much bigger leak at a vent operated by Italy-based Snam, Europe’s largest pipeline company. Snam is one of several companies in a multinational consortium backing TAP’s Italian infrastructure. (Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, a publicly controlled joint-stock company, owns a 31 percent stake in Snam).

Snam data for the same day showed normal gas flows, with no anomalies, maintenance activities, or emergencies that would have necessitated deliberate venting of gas — suggesting Santoriello had identified leaks in the venting system.

Their locations aligned with readings taken at the same spot in 2021 by the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), an international nongovernmental organisation that monitors methane emissions around the world. 

The leaks “are consistent and contribute significantly to methane concentrations in the area,” said James Turitto, CATF’s global campaign director.

Natural gas operations in Italy have a notably high frequency of methane leaks, according to an analysis conducted by CATF. Some regions show leaks at more than 90 percent of surveyed facilities, findings further supported by a 2022–2024 monitoring campaign conducted by CATF and Legambiente, an Italian environmental nonprofit.

Although TAP is relatively new infrastructure, Santoriello said that the data collected by Cova Contro and CATF suggests the pipeline may be suffering from the kind of persistent leaks found in older facilities.

“This calls into question the commitments made by Italy under the Green Deal and European agreements,” Santoriello said’

‘Worn Component’

Snam has sought to position itself as a climate leader by pledging to achieve carbon neutrality in terms of the emissions associated with its own operations, as well as the power generated to keep them running, by 2040 — ahead of EU targets. The company is also part of the Oil & Gas Methane Partnership 2.0, a methane monitoring and mitigation program coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Nevertheless, doubts remain over how far Snam’s net-zero plan is aligned with the temperature targets that nations agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The company’s continued investment in gas network and storage facilities, and the huge quantities of emissions created when the gas it provides is burned, are undermining its climate goals, according to a January report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. 

In response to questions about the leaks detected by Santoriello and CATF, Snam stated that it was aware of the emissions, and acknowledged that they did “not represent intentional gas discharges from the ‘vent’ in question, of an operational or emergency nature.” 

According to Snam, the leak was caused by “the imperfect internal seal of a worn component,” which it would replace “in the coming months.” The company said it shares relevant methane data “with the Competent Authorities,” referring to the Region of Puglia.  

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection (ARPA) in Bari, Puglia, said that under the TAP Interconnection environmental monitoring plan (PMA), Snam has not been required to submit atmospheric monitoring data since the end of construction.

TAP AG, a Swiss-based joint venture owned in equal parts by Snam, British oil giant BP, SOCAR, Fluxys, and Enagas that operates TAP, said that it regularly monitors and takes steps to stop non-emergency gas releases. 

“The fugitive emissions you referred to from the related vents were quickly detected and adequately quantified by TAP by international protocols for calculating methane emissions, and the results were analysed through a specialized third-party contractor and are reported annually to the Competent Authorities,” the company said.

TAP AG said it was taking steps to repair the leaks, and that they had been included in the company’s most recent Greenhouse Gases (GHG), an annual report on CO2, methane, and other carbon emissions from TAP AG’s operations across Greece, Albania, Italy, and Switzerland (where the company is headquartered), “which are covered by the Kyoto Protocol for the preparation of emissions inventories.”

More broadly, Veysalov Vugar, TAP AG’s head of external affairs, has sought to downplay the climate damage caused by methane emissions, describing natural gas as “comparatively the cleanest of fossil fuels.”

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“At TAP, we are focused on ensuring that the energy transition happens in the most sustainable way possible, particularly in Southeast Europe,” Vugar said in a video interview in 2023. “It’s just a pipeline, buried at least a meter underground,” he added, “quietly transporting gas.”

In Italy, TAP AG is required under the TAP Interconnection PMA to submit detailed yearly reports to the Region of Puglia on methane emissions, as well as semi-annual reports on other potentially harmful atmospheric pollutants.

However, it is not clear whether those reports have been made. In its response to the Freedom of Information request, ARPA stated that it has not received TAP reports from the Region since 2022, when TAP submitted a report containing 2021 data. ARPA provides scientific support on pipeline monitoring and analysis to the Region of Puglia, but has no authority to enforce the PMA.

ARPA also stated that it has not corresponded with the Region of Puglia about the missing reports.

The Region of Puglia did not respond to questions.

TAP’s Greenhouse Gas Report (GHG) 2024 shows a reduction of methane emissions across its operations, with data broken down by country and installation type. But the report doesn’t provide a more granular picture of exactly where methane is being emitted, and in what quantities — meaning there is no estimate of the actual methane emissions from the TAP Interconnection vent at Melendugno.

Local Opposition 

Italian law gives citizens the right to access environmental data about their municipalities — a principle also enshrined in the EU’s 1998 Aarhus Convention, which Italy ratified in 2001. 

However, activists and Melendugno residents contend that TAP has been plagued with transparency problems since its planning and construction phases, which began more than a decade ago.

Some residents say they were unaware the pipeline was coming until they were notified that portions of their land would be expropriated for the project. Some say they never received a notice, and others that they found out when workers from the transnational company behind the project showed up on their property. 

Antonio Dell’Anna, a local resident and landowner, said he was aware at the time that TAP employees were in the area. “But we didn’t know they were interested in this particular plot of land” — a section of the property he co-owns with his father — until they saw a stranger walking on it one day. The man identified himself as an archaeologist working for the pipeline.

Dell’Anna said he and his father were forced to give up the property, and that they had to negotiate three offers from TAP over 10 years to receive a fair price in compensation.

“It was something imposed on us,” said Dell’Anna, “without any room for dialogue, not even minimal.”

According to Marco Poti, the mayor of Melendugno from 2012 to 2021, TAP’s influence in Rome allowed the company to bypass questions or opposition to the project from him, the city council, and local residents. 

Meanwhile, pro-TAP advertising spanned radio, television, and regional and national newspapers, said Poti. “Their goal was to portray this project as an opportunity, not as something harmful and dangerous.”  

At a public hearing in October 2017, Poti said that “no project details have been received or published, apart from an indicative layout plan” for the TAP Interconnection — the infrastructure linking the pipeline to Italy’s gas network, where the leaks were detected. 

Twenty-five people who participated in protests against the project in 2017 were subsequently charged, said lawyer Francesco Calabro, who represented some of the protestors. The charges included taking part in an unauthorised protest, obstruction of public roads, and insulting a public official.

In 2018, the municipality of Melendugno and the No TAP Movement, a local campaign group, filed a lawsuit against TAP AG alleging that the company had failed to conduct proper environmental risk assessments, among other violations. However, a local court dismissed the case in May this year, citing a lack of evidence.  

The verdict was a blow to campaigners, who say TAP AG should be more transparent.

“TAP was plundering our resources,” said Serena Fiorentino, an activist with a group of mothers supporting the No TAP Movement. “Here, power is power.”

‘Independent Monitoring’

In August, Santoriello found only barely-detectable traces of very small leaks from one of the two TAP terminals — raising the question of whether the leaks he’d found the previous year had been fixed, or whether there might be some other reason for the lower readings. Still, for Cova Contro activists, the task of building a more precise picture of the methane leaking from the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline has only just begun.

The group plans to organise public meetings, inform local media, and — if it can gather sufficient evidence — petition public prosecutors to investigate any possible breaches of the regulations. 

Santoriello carries his thermal imaging camera and equipment through an olive grove near the Melendugno natural gas reception terminal. Credit: Teresa Di Mauro

Santoriello said Cova Contro wanted to work with regulators to stage unannounced site visits to check for methane leaks, but the relevant authorities declined to engage, or even respond to requests for a meeting. That has left the public dependent on methane data gathered by the gas companies themselves, he said, when the state should be taking the lead in monitoring.

“The data shows that current controls are insufficient,” Santoriello said. “The only certainty we have is that private [companies] possess technologies that are more advanced than those used by public regulators, and that alone should be enough to alarm any reasonable person.”

Critics say that there is an even more fundamental question hanging over TAP: At this critical point in the climate crisis, with gas demand declining and the EU committed to decarbonization, why continue investing in a natural gas pipeline?

Alessandro Manuelli, an engineer who coordinated a municipal commission established by Melendugno to evaluate the TAP project, said he could not understand why TAP was pushing to reach its annual capacity of 20 billion cubic meters of gas imports, when the EU’s methane law envisages phasing out natural gas altogether.

“If we truly intended to respect the Paris Agreement,” he said, “we should never have built TAP in the first place.”

This story was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

The post The Methane Hunters of Melendugno appeared first on DeSmog.

The sponsor of a flagship event at Reform UK’s annual conference has accused party leader Nigel Farage of adopting “very far-right, very anti-immigrant” rhetoric, DeSmog can reveal.

The event was hosted on 6 September by the Heartland Institute – an infamous U.S. climate science denial group – and run “in collaboration” with Quews News.

Founded by psychiatrist Sohail Qureshi, Quews News claims to “broadcast [an] accurate, impartial and unbiased Pakistani narrative on sociopolitical issues”.

Qureshi has used his channel to slam Farage’s views on immigration – claiming in a YouTube video on 8 July that Farage is spreading “a very far-right, very anti-immigrant, anti-[Islam], anti-Pakistan rhetoric”.

Just a couple of weeks before Reform’s conference, Qureshi also suggested that anti-immigrant attitudes have been “weaponised” by “far-right TV channels like GB News and TalkTV, and then the emergence of the Reform party and the EDL and Tommy Robinson”.

The anti-climate broadcaster GB News is Farage’s principal employer, paying him £400,000 a year to host a show four nights a week. A GB News spokesperson said that Qureshi’s claims about the channel were “absurd”.

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While Quews News was not only allowed to attend Reform’s conference in Birmingham, but also to sponsor a panel, media outlets including DeSmog and The New World were barred from entering.

Quews News appears to have struck a partnership with the Heartland Institute, despite the latter’s close ties to Farage and far-right politicians across Europe.

The Heartland Institute’s UK-EU director Lois Perry, who hosts a YouTube show on Quews News featuring Heartland branding, claimed at Reform’s conference that her institute is advising the party on its climate policies.

She said that she was “very grateful to be able to consult and influence the Reform party at the highest level.”

Perry has reiterated this claim on Quews News, stating in a video on 10 September: “Do you know why they [Reform] are abolishing net zero and why that’s their policy? Me.”

She has also used her Quews News show to interview senior Reform figures, including its head of policy Zia Yusuf.

Heartland Institute UK-EU director Lois Perry hosting a YouTube show on Quews News. Credit: Quews News / YouTube

The Heartland Institute has denied that humans are driving climate change, which it has called a “delusion”.

Reform has pledged to scrap the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, and instead campaigns to ramp up fossil fuel production and end subsidies for clean energy.

Farage attended a fundraising dinner for the Heartland Institute in September 2024 during which he called for the group to open a wing “on the other side of the pond”.

In December, Heartland announced that it had followed Farage’s advice and was setting up a UK-EU branch. Farage was a “special guest of honour” at the launch event and headlined an invite-only Heartland Institute panel in June this year entitled “Net Zero: The New Brexit?” held at 55 Tufton Street in Westminster.

Perry, who like Farage is a former UKIP leader, has said she doesn’t believe climate change is caused by humans. She has said it’s her “personal belief” that climate change “is happening” but “is not man made”.

Most senior Reform politicians, including Farage, deny basic climate science. At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in February, the Reform leader said it was “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant. In the same month, Farage’s deputy Richard Tice told Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”

In August, Reform’s Great Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns said in an interview with Times Radio: “Do I believe that climate change exists? No.”

Reform received 92 percent of its donations between the 2019 and 2024 UK elections from polluting sources and climate science deniers, while its treasurer Nick Candy has claimed the party is actively raising money from oil executives.

The Heartland Institute has been heavily funded by the pro-Trump Mercer family and groups used to mask the source of political donations. It has historically received donations from big tobacco, the Koch family – a leading global sponsor of climate denial – and the oil major ExxonMobil.

Quews News, the Heartland Institute, and Reform UK were approached for comment.

Quews on Climate

Quews News has also frequently given a platform to anti-climate views.

On Perry’s show, former UKIP candidate and hereditary peer Christopher Monckton claimed that climate change was a “scam” and that Russia’s climate model was “the only one that now produces accurate predictions of global warming”.

He also attacked the Labour government’s net zero plans, calling them “totalitarian” and “communist,” labelling the State Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband “as thick as two short planks.”

It’s unclear how these views conform to Quews News’ mission statement. The platform claims to have been founded to address the “destabilising polarisation of attitudes” among voters and that it strives “to create a shared platform, a public sphere, that increases harmony, peace, and solidarity worldwide.”

Quews News CEO Sohail Qureshi. Credit: Quews News / YouTube

On another Quews News show, dating coach Kezia Noble moderated a panel on net zero featuring Harry Wilkinson, head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s foremost climate science denial group, and regular GB News commentator Lee Harris.

Noble opened the discussion by suggesting that climate change is not caused by human activity. “There are many who say climate change is a natural cycle and that the planet has been at the mercy of these changes for many years, long before humans existed,” she said.

Wilkinson argued that the UK should extract more oil and gas – and restart fracking – which Noble called a “well thought-out plan.”

Harris said, “there’s no definite scientific answer as to whether all of the stuff [climate change] we’re seeing happen is completely man-made” after admitting earlier in the show that he was no “academic on net zero.”

In reality, scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have stressed that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

A recent report by the New Economics Foundation also found that Reform’s climate policies would cost more than 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the UK economy.

A version of this story has been published by The New World

This article was produced with the support of the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF). The sole responsibility for any content supported by the EMIF lies with the author(s) and it may not necessarily reflect the positions of the EMIF and the Fund Partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute.

The post Reform Conference Sponsor Called Farage’s Rhetoric ‘Very Far-Right’ appeared first on DeSmog.

A UK charity that portrays itself as a climate leader facilitated a £830,000 donation to the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank heavily funded by U.S. oil billionaire Charles Koch, DeSmog can reveal.

The London-based Founders Pledge channels donations from entrepreneurs to charities – empowering business leaders “to do immense good”, according to its website.

This includes giving money to climate causes. The Founders Pledge runs a Climate Fund that claims to “find and fund impactful, neglected climate solutions” – having distributed almost $36 million from over 5,000 donors.

Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) like the one sponsored by the Founders Pledge allow wealthy individuals to anonymously distribute money and other assets. Research shows that DAFs are increasingly being used to funnel money to reactionary causes – including in the UK.

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The Mercatus Center is a conservative “market oriented” think tank registered as a charity. Mercatus and its sister group the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), both located at George Mason University, have been funded by American billionaire and oil magnate Charles Koch, co-founder of Koch Industries – the second-largest private company in the U.S.

The network of influence controlled and supported by Charles Koch and his late brother David includes “a web of interconnected, right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups”. The pair have piled millions of dollars into causes promoting climate disinformation, including buying credibility with large investments in academic institutions.

Between 2018 and 2022, George Mason was by far the biggest university in receipt of Charles Koch’s money. The three institutions – George Mason, Mercatus, and the IHS – received $128.6 million from four Koch foundations during the period. The Mercatus Center, which has called climate change “beneficial”, has also received funding from the oil major ExxonMobil. 

And yet, the Founders Pledge – which distributes over £100 million annually and operates in the UK, Germany, and U.S. – has been featured in articles highlighting its green credentials and has been labelled as being among the most “high-impact, cost-effective, evidenced-based organisations” to donate through. 

Firms operating DAFs have the right to refuse to give to certain causes, though in practice this rarely happens.

The Founders Pledge told DeSmog: “We tackle climate change as the global, long-term challenge it is, focusing on solutions that change trajectories, transform systems, reduce the biggest risks for devastating damage around the world, and that will be effective even if everything goes wrong.

“Among other efforts, we fund efforts to fast-track low-carbon technologies like advanced geothermal and to make new infrastructure as low-carbon as possible and look for ways to reduce future emissions from existing systems.”

The Mercatus Center did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.

The Mercatus Center and Charles Koch

DeSmog’s investigation finds that the Founders Pledge was used to donate almost £830,000 to the Mercatus Center in 2022.

Mercatus was originally founded – with grant funding from Charles Koch – by Richard Fink, an executive vice president and board member at Koch Industries who, along with Charles, still sits on the Mercatus board and has previously been described as “a fixture in Koch Industries”.

Brian Hooks, CEO and chair of the Koch-founded Stand Together Trust, also sits on the board alongside Emily Chamlee-Wright, president and CEO of the IHS. 

Charles Koch is chairman emeritus of the IHS board, which is largely populated by George Mason professors and representatives from the Charles Koch Foundation and Stand Together. It has been described by Mother Jones as “a haven for climate deniers that receives funding from the Koch family foundations”.

The Koch Foundation has paid the salaries of Mercatus Center professors, which in turn have produced work arguing that “The evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and as forecasts of anthropogenic warming get more refined, they predict less extreme warming.” 

In 2020, the think tank was also accused of promoting “flawed” research to “hobble” environmental research in Australia, and it has previously suggested that climate change could be “beneficial” and make humanity “better off”. 

The Institute for Humane Studies declined to offer an on the record comment. 

Political Donations

The Founders Pledge received some £111 million in 2023, and distributed £101.4 million to various charitable causes.

Originating in the U.S. in the 1930s, DAFs are increasingly used by the wealthy to donate to political causes – and often those with reactionary beliefs. A 2024 study found that DAFs are more likely to be used for political donations than other funding methods, while they account for more than one-quarter of all contributions received by “anti-government and hate groups”.

Money from prominent DAFs has been used to finance the radical Project 2025 playbook for Donald Trump’s second term, to contribute to the coffers of groups campaigning against women’s and LGBTQ rights, and to prop up climate denial think tanks, all without the original donors having to disclose their identities. 

As of 2023, roughly 2 million DAFs in the U.S. distributed $55 billion in grants to charitable organisations, while UK charities received £645 million from DAFs in the same year, according to the National Philanthropic Trust. 

Speaking to DeSmog on the opacity of DAFs, Brian Mittendorf, a professor at Ohio State University and co-author of the aforementioned study, said that his research “shows that donor advised funds in the U.S. disproportionately fund politically engaged institutions” and that “one motivation for this could be to limit revelations about who funds political organisations.”

He added that “public disclosures by these organisations make it difficult to identify which fund provided money to which organisations and especially who gave money to those funds in the first place.”

“When private foundations distribute money to a donor advised fund prior to it being sent to the ultimate recipient, the paper trail is lost,” he said.

The Rise of DAFs in the UK

The practice of channelling political donations through DAFs now seems to be more commonplace in the UK.

One DAF supplier – called Prism The Gift Fund – has been used to distribute nearly £1.6 million since 2017 to a suite of right-wing think tanks and lobby groups including Policy Exchange, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Legatum Institute (now the Prosperity Institute), the Centre for Social Justice, and Henry Jackson Society.

The ultimate source of the funds are unknown.

Moreover, research into the transparency requirements surrounding DAFs suggest that the UK could even be lagging behind the U.S.

One key area is how grants are recorded. In the U.S., DAF providers are required to list most of the grants they pay out in their annual returns. Speaking to DeSmog, Mittendorf explained that suppliers of DAFs in the U.S. have to disclose who received a donation if it surpasses $5,000.

This differs from the UK, where there is no formal requirement for DAF providers to list their recipients, although some still choose to do so.

In the case of the Founders Pledge, while recipients of larger donations are named in its 2023 accounts, “grants less than £645,000” are recorded as one lump sum, with no way to tell where that money has gone to, in addition to not being able to tell where it has come from.

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission confirmed that, at present, recording requirements are minimal. “As DAFs are managed by the charities they reside in, our guidance for the parent charities/trustees is the same as for any other charity, rather than specifically for DAFs… No charities are required to list all the organisations they provide grants to.”

A spokesperson for another prominent DAF provider, The Charity Service, said that “the issues around transparency and DAFs is an interesting one especially as anonymous giving is one of the perceived benefits of giving through a DAF for many donors.”

Tom Brake, director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy, said: “The increasingly influential role think tanks have in our democracy must go hand-in-hand with greater transparency over who funds them and to what end. DAFs do the exact opposite, shielding those donating to think tanks and other organisations from public scrutiny.”

The post How a ‘Pro-Climate’ Charity Channelled Cash to a Koch-Funded Think Tank appeared first on DeSmog.

This story is being published in collaboration with The Tyee, an award-winning independent media outlet based in BC. 

Danielle Smith and her team met with members of the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation not long after the 2024 U.S. election, the Alberta premier said at a conference last month.

Smith was speaking at the recent Canada Strong and Free conference in Calgary when she described meeting with the group that spearheaded Project 2025, the plan to rapidly overhaul the U.S. government under U.S. President Donald Trump. Smith said she met with the think tank to represent the interests of Alberta and Canada and to better understand Trump and his policies.

“We met with the Heritage Foundation when Donald Trump first got elected because we knew that the Heritage Foundation was one of many different groups that are influential on him,” said Smith. “We wanted to understand what kind of policies he was advocating and to see if we could frame our interests and talking points in terms of the U.S. president’s interests.”

The Heritage Foundation is a highly influential conservative think tank that advocates for free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, and traditional American values. Its Republican influence dates back to 1981, when about two-thirds of the group’s policy recommendations were adopted by the Reagan Administration.

The think tank is widely known for authoring Project 2025, the plan to “dismantle the administrative state” by closing government offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with Trump allies. Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but its agenda, including climate policy rollbacks and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, has forged ahead since his re-election.

A recent DeSmog report found that 70 percent of Trump’s cabinet and more than 50 high level officials have ties to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. They include vice president JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the recently departed head of DOGE Elon Musk.

Danielle Smith speaks at the Canada Strong and Free conference in Calgary in September. Credit: David Falk Trump’s Canadian ally

This isn’t the first meeting Smith has had with allies of the American president. Earlier this year she went to Florida to speak with the conservative influencer Ben Shapiro at a fundraising event for conservative media organization PragerU. The pair discussed electing “solid allies” to Trump in Canada.

In an interview with Breitbart News in March she appeared to be supportive of Trump and said that federal conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would be a better ally to the Americans. “Pierre would bring would be very much in sync with, I think…the new direction in America,” she told them. “And I think we’d have a really great relationship for the period of time they’re both in,” seeming to refer to Trump.

Smith’s comments in Florida and her meeting with the Heritage Foundation came at a time when tariffs severely strained Canada-U.S. relations and when Trump often joked about annexing Canada.

The Heritage Foundation was recently in the news when its president Kevin D. Roberts was invited to speak to Canadian Prime Minister Marc Carney’s cabinet at the beginning of September. An invitation that one former Liberal advisor called “mind boggling.” 

Roberts later declined the invitation, saying that he was in Washington. A statement from the prime minister’s office later read “our team will continue further engagement and discussions with him and other leading U.S. policy figures soon.”

‘Trump’s not going to be influenced by me’

Neither Danielle Smith’s office nor the Heritage Foundation responded to requests to elaborate on what was discussed in the meeting.

But at the Canada Strong and Free conference Smith claimed such meetings are normal and often organized by the Alberta Washington Office currently run by former UCP MLA and Speaker Nathan Cooper. She added that her team would be meeting with Democrats had they been in office.

Smith said she learned that Trump is influenced by his donors and supporters during the Heritage Foundation meeting, and that she aimed to figure out who they were so she could better frame her talking points to the Americans.

“Trump’s not going to be influenced by me,” she said. “The way you talk to him are in terms of mutual interest, and most importantly, American interests. And there’s a lot of American interest in maintaining their economic ties with Canada.”

Smith was just one of several speakers at the conference organized by the Canada Strong and Free Network, formerly the Manning Centre, held last month in Calgary. Others speakers included Conrad Black, journalist Tristin Hopper and lawyer Keith Wilson who has become a leading figure in the Alberta separatist movement.

The post Danielle Smith Met with Heritage Foundation After U.S. Election appeared first on DeSmog.

As artificial intelligence company OpenAI plans its rapid construction of behemoth power-guzzling data centers to fuel the AI boom, it has hired a new energy chief – an official from the first Trump administration who is a dedicated champion of natural gas.
 
John McCarrick, the company’s new head of Global Energy Policy, was a senior energy policy advisor in the first Trump administration’s Bureau of Energy Resources in the Department of State while under former Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo.
 
As deputy assistant secretary for Energy Transformation and the special envoy for International Energy Affairs, McCarrick promoted exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and advocated for Asian countries to invest in natural gas.

The choice to hire McCarrick matches the intentions of OpenAI’s Trump-dominating CEO Sam Altman, who said in a U.S. Senate hearing in May that “in the short term, I think [the future of powering AI] probably looks like more natural gas.”
 
 It also aligns with the company’s early moves toward powering new data centers, huge warehouses full of linked-up computers that require enormous quantities of water and electricity, to run with gas. OpenAI’s U.S. Stargate Project site in Texas, which is slated to become one of the largest data center sites in the world, is already installing off-grid gas turbines to power its operations.

“Big Tech’s collusion with the Trump administration’s fossil fuel agenda for artificial intelligence is evident in their massive investment in methane gas power infrastructure — as well as pro-gas political operatives like McCarrick,” Tyson Slocum, director of consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said.
 
The “solution” of powering AI with gas is part of Trump’s AI energy policy platform.  In a July speech to announce a $96 billion AI and energy funding package, Trump lauded fossil fuel and coal-powered data center development while flanked by oil and gas executives.
 
By installing gas turbines to power its data centers, OpenAI has joined a growing cadre of tech giants, including Meta, xAI, and Microsoft, that have begun installing gas-powered generators at their data center sites to meet the surging energy demands of the supercomputer complexes.
 
OpenAI has additionally chosen not to disclose the carbon footprint of ChatGPT-5, its most advanced AI model to date, despite the fact that researchers told the Guardian it uses “a significantly larger amount of energy” than responses from GPT-40. The company, which is rapidly expanding internationally, does not have formally announced climate or sustainability targets.
 
Altman has also expressed that he thinks artificial intelligence will solve climate change, despite the fact that the technology’s voracious, ever-expanding demand for electricity poses a serious threat to net-zero targets worldwide.
 
 “I don’t want to say this because climate change is so serious and so hard of a problem,” Altman said in a 2023 interview. “But I think once we have a really powerful superintelligence, addressing climate change will not be particularly difficult for a system like that.”
 
As Altman’s energy pick, McCarrick has a long history of hawking oil and gas. Previously, McCarrick advised on energy policy for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 election campaign. At the time, Romney, who did not mention climate change in his energy platform, held the stance that the U.S. should ramp up coal and other forms of fossil fuel production.
 
Even earlier, as a senior energy policy advisor for the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008, McCarrick claimed to be the source of its “‘all of the above’ energy strategy” in his LinkedIn profile.

At a campaign rally during the 2008 presidential campaign, vice presidential candidate and then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin adopted the phrase, announcing: “John [McCain] and I will adopt the all of the above approach,” she said, listing a variety of cleaner energy sources before adding, “we’ll develop clean coal technology, and we’ll drill for the billions of barrels of oil and that we have right now warehoused underground including our resources offshore. We will drill here and drill now — and here’s where you chant ‘drill baby drill.’”

Hiring a former member of Trump’s team aligns OpenAI even more closely to the current Trump administration.

OpenAI’s CEO Altman already donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund. He also accompanied Trump to the UK in September for the president’s second state visit where Trump announced the U.S.-UK Technology Prosperity Deal.
 
Altman’s history with climate deniers goes back to the roots of his career. His mentor is Peter Thiel, Paypal founder and CEO of data analytics software giant Palantir, who has a history of climate denialist statements. Thiel is also a long-time Trump donor, having given at least $1.75 million to Trump campaigns from 2016 to 2020. 

The Palantir CEO has claimed climate science is “fake science,” has called climate activist Greta Thunberg the “anti-Christ,” and has funded a science journal that publishes climate denial.

In 2022, Altman also donated over $32,000 to climate denier Michael Shellenberger’s failed campaign for governor of California.

Shellenberger has made extensive claims denying the severity of climate change, including that “humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction,’” “the Amazon is not ‘the lungs of the world,’” and “climate change is not making natural disasters worse.”

Shellenberger is well known for his advocacy for nuclear energy. When he announced his run for governor on the Joe Rogan podcast, he argued that “nuclear power is the future.”

Shellenberger’s views on nuclear power align with Altman’s own long-held positions on energy. In a 2015 blog on Altman’s personal website, he argued, “The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy.”
 
Altman then expresses doubt as to the energy sources of our own era: “I am unsure how the majority of the 21st century will be powered,” he wrote.

If John McCarrick has his way, it appears the answer to Altman’s lack of surety is — gas. McCarrick appears to be a speaker at the North American Gas Forum in Washington, D.C. in December.

The post OpenAI’s New Energy Chief Is a Trump Administration Natural Gas Evangelist appeared first on DeSmog.

Open Letter – Please Say No to Dirty Drax’s Plea to Pollute

The tourism and travel industries have created a destructive duo, one that jeopardises the way of life for local communities and destroys the environment to create profit for a few. But travel and leisure time could look so different if we recreate these systems with the majority of people in mind. As part of our strategy conference in Barcelona in July 2025 we created collective visions of what…

Source

Ian Graham and John Jensen

The version of record of this op-ed appeared in the National Observer.

We’ve made halting progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Despite setbacks, countries are switching to electric vehicles and expanding renewable electricity. But even if we succeed in slashing human-made emissions, the climate math we’re working with is incomplete. A huge missing piece comes from the Arctic: potential emissions from thawing permafrost aren’t even counted in most global climate models or in the carbon budgets underpinning Paris Agreement commitments.

This permafrost thaw presents more than a rounding issue — it’s a potential carbon time bomb. As frozen soil begins to release vast stores of carbon dioxide and methane, it risks unleashing a self-reinforcing feedback loop: warming causes thaw, thaw causes emissions and emissions drive still more warming. Left unaddressed, these feedbacks could overwhelm even our most ambitious efforts to cut human-made emissions.

You might expect that governments and research institutions are already working full tilt on this problem — and they should be. A new Cascade Institute report reviews the current state of such work, and identifies 13 potential interventions that could slow or stop permafrost thaw and curb resulting emissions. Most are still in early stages of research and development, but together they represent a critical frontier for innovation. With focused investment and international cooperation, at least some of these interventions could transform from tentative experiments into the tools we need to defuse the permafrost carbon time bomb.

Permafrost, found mainly in the Arctic North, is permanently frozen soil laid down over the past million or so years, during periods when the planet was much colder than today. It’s also one of nature’s great storehouses of carbon. The scale of that storehouse is hard to fathom: over one and a half trillion metric tonnes of carbon locked in the ice, more than twice the amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere. And Canada is home to more of that permafrost than any country but Russia.

Because of recent warming, this reservoir is starting to thaw. And when the frozen organic material is released, it begins to decay, releasing its planet-heating gasses.

Emissions from permafrost thaw are currently small compared with those from direct human activities. These emissions are expected to accelerate significantly as thaw becomes more severe, although much uncertainty remains around the trajectory and timing of this increase.

The best case? The impact of thaw will make it harder to achieve our net-zero goals and a stabilized average global temperature and might somewhat raise the temperature at which we stabilize the climate.

The worst case is calamity: rapid and accelerating thaw triggering a vicious cascade of rising concentrations of planet-heating carbon, with permafrost thaw driving further heating, which in turn drives further thaw.

We don’t yet know which case is most likely, or where between the two we might end up. But we know enough to start searching for solutions. Of the 13 interventions we reviewed, only three — wildfire management, caribou herding, and conservation or restoration of peatlands and wetlands — are already commonly practiced, though not yet in ways designed to specifically prevent or slow permafrost thaw.

Work on the other 10 is either very preliminary (e.g., engineering bacteria to reduce methane emissions) or extremely controversial (e.g., injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect some of the incoming solar radiation).

Moreover, all these interventions will require years of research and development to move from ideas to tools we understand and could use effectively. And all will need an operating and governance model for developing and eventually deploying these strategies, led by Indigenous Peoples and other Northern stakeholders.

But today there are no plans to create such an operating and governance model, and no plan to conduct the needed R&D.

In the current environment, neither Russia nor the United States is likely to act on this threat. It’s thus up to Canada to lead, in cooperation with other permafrost nations — the Nordic countries, China, Greenland and Mongolia.

The situation is urgent. Permafrost is already thawing and that thaw is accelerating, pushing us closer to a potential point of no return. We need to understand the challenge and start dealing with it, before it’s too late.

Ian Graham is an affiliated researcher at the Cascade Institute and the author of the report Protecting Permafrost: Addressing the climate threat of Arctic thaw.

John Jensen is a sustainable-energy-focused entrepreneur, a former director of the Yukon Energy Board, and a member of the Gaanaxtedi Clan of the Carcross Tagish First Nation.

 

Read article in The National Observer The post Canada must lead on permafrost protection appeared first on Cascade Institute.

For more than a week now — beginning September 23 — the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has remained disconnected from Ukraine’s national power grid. This marks the tenth blackout at the facility during nearly three and a half years of Russian occupation, and the longest one to date.

For more than four months, the plant has relied on a single external power line, whereas before 2022 it had ten. This sole remaining 750-kilovolt line, running north to connect the plant with Ukraine’s energy system, was reportedly damaged about 1.5 kilometers from the site because of military action. The line was cut at 16:56 local time on September 23, according to both the Russian-installed plant management and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Since then, the plant has been powered by backup diesel generators. Electricity from either the external grid or the generators is vital for the plant’s internal systems — especially where cooling the nuclear fuel stored in the reactors and spent fuel pools is concerned. Without cooling, this fuel could overheat and melt, leading to a situation reminiscent of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

However, the current blackout raises not only the risk of a radiation accident but also suspicions that it could be part of a Russian plan to reconnect the Zaporizhzhia plant to its own power grid.

Despite the danger and instability, the actual risk of a nuclear accident remains relatively low. The plant has enough diesel generators — twenty in total. Immediately after the 750-kV line was cut on September 23, eighteen generators automatically kicked in, while two were under maintenance. As in similar incidents before, staff gradually reduced the number in operation to those required to supply essential systems, conserving fuel. As of September 30, eight generators remain running.

Russian officials have repeatedly informed the IAEA that the plant maintains enough diesel fuel on site to power the emergency generators for at least 20 days. Deliveries of diesel are reportedly ongoing, and additional shipments could be arranged if necessary. This allows the plant to remain in this emergency mode for quite some time.

Even in the event of generator failure — due to breakdowns or fuel shortages — there would still be enough time to act before the nuclear fuel overheats and begins to melt.

All six reactors have been shut down for over three years, and the residual heat from radioactive decay — which decreases exponentially over time — is now much lower than immediately after shutdown. Based on data used in Bellona’s 2024 report on the potential restart of the plant, current residual heat output per reactor does not exceed 800 kilowatts. Including spent fuel in cooling pools, total heat generation per reactor unit is no more than 2.5 megawatts (a conservative estimate — the real value is likely lower).

This means that even if all cooling systems were to fail completely, the remaining water in the reactor buildings would continue to cool the fuel through evaporation for at least two to three weeks — enough time to take emergency measures and prevent a major accident.

Only if nothing were done at all would the fuel begin to overheat and melt, potentially damaging the reactor vessel and allowing molten material to reach the lower levels of the unit — and theoretically, the ground and surrounding environment. Some radioactive materials could also be released into the atmosphere, either through pressure relief from the reactor’s containment or as a result of hydrogen explosions if recombination systems fail.

For now, however, there is enough time — and enough technical options — to prevent any of these scenarios, beginning with the repair of the damaged power line and the maintenance of the backup generators.

So why hasn’t Russia repaired the line, and could it be using this situation as a pretext to switch the plant over to its own power grid?

First, the power line could have been repaired long ago. According to the IAEA and the Russian occupation authorities at the plant, the break occurred about 1.5 kilometers from the plant on territory controlled by n troops along the left bank of the former Kakhovka Reservoir. It seems unlikely that for more than a week, repair crews — who have fixed similar line breaks in a matter of hours in the past — have been unable to do so.

Additionally, satellite imagery analysis conducted by McKenzie Intelligence Services for Greenpeace found no evidence of shelling or visible damage to the transmission line in question, calling into doubt the official Russian explanation for the outage.

Illustration: Power transmission from the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Four 750-kV lines (blue) and six 330-kV lines (yellow). The alleged damaged section of the “Dniprovska” 750-kV line is circled in red. Map based on Bellona’s 2024 report “Potential Restart of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

As Bellona noted in its 2024 report on the possible restart of the ZNPP, connecting the plant to Russia’s power grid — or to that of the occupied territories — would be a necessary first step for Moscow in preparing to restart the facility.

This would not mean an immediate restart. Major technical issues remain unresolved: restoring water supplies, reloading nuclear fuel, and expanding transmission lines to carry power from the plant. Despite some progress—such as preparations for new pumping stations and transmission routes—restarting even one reactor is still months away.

For now, the likely goal would be simply to connect the plant to Russia’s grid to provide the few megawatts of electricity needed for safety systems. Under the pretext that the repair of the Ukrainian connection is impossible due to combat operations, Russia could attempt such a switch. In June this year, Russia informed the IAEA via diplomatic note that it had developed exactly such a plan in case of a plant blackout.

This could then be presented as a humanitarian step — “saving the plant from a nuclear accident” — a message that might find a sympathetic audience within the IAEA and among an anxious international public.

For that reason, the current situation must be assessed soberly: the immediate danger to the plant is serious but manageable. The greater danger lies in Moscow’s potential use of the crisis to justify reconnecting the plant to its own grid — portraying itself as the savior preventing a nuclear disaster.

In reality, any step toward integrating the Zaporizhzhia plant into Russia’s power system would only worsen its strategic situation, give Moscow additional leverage, and bring a potential restart closer — a move that, amid ongoing fighting, would itself sharply increase the risk of a nuclear accident.

Under no circumstances should the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant be reconnected to the Russian grid or restarted. The facility must return to the full control of its rightful owner — Ukraine.

Bellona calls on the IAEA and other international organizations not to assist or legitimize Russia’s unlawful plans to integrate the Zaporizhzhia NPP into its own energy system or to normalize the current occupation status.

The post Is the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s longest blackout a scheme for Russia to siphon off its power? appeared first on Bellona.org.

Comments to the BSI on the standards for the quantification of greenhouse gas removals associated with BECCS on behalf of Biofuelwatch

Del 20 al 22 de agosto de 2025, la ciudad de Valparaíso fue sede del IV Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática, un espacio clave para la articulación regional frente a la crisis climática global. Organizado por la Plataforma Latinoamericana y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática (PLACJC) y la Campaña Global para Exigir Justicia Climática (DCJ), el encuentro reunió a más de 60 personas de distintos territorios del continente con un objetivo común: avanzar hacia una transición justa que enfrente la captura corporativa del clima y denuncie las falsas soluciones promovidas por actores económicos, corporativos, públicos y privados.

Este evento marca un hito dentro de la segunda fase del proyecto “Detener la Captura Corporativa Climática” que ambas plataformas implementan en la región, con el propósito de fortalecer el movimiento por la justicia climática en América Latina y el Caribe, impulsar articulaciones regionales y visibilizar los impactos de proyectos que, aunque se presentan como sostenibles, profundizan la desigualdad, el extractivismo y la vulneración de derechos.

El encuentro se desarrolló a lo largo de tres intensas jornadas que abordaron de manera integral las falsas soluciones a la crisis climática y las alternativas reales desde los pueblos y territorios. En la primera jornada, los participantes exploraron colectivamente el concepto de falsas soluciones, actualizando el Mapa de Falsas Soluciones a través de análisis grupales y debates, mientras que mediante metodologías creativas, como la elaboración de arpilleras, se visibilizaron las resistencias y alternativas territoriales. El segundo día profundizó en prácticas de protección y cuidados subversivos, junto con metodologías de educación popular que fortalecen el trabajo colectivo y la movilización social, complementando las proyecciones del proyecto “Detener la Captura Corporativa Climática” y el intercambio entre redes regionales, como la Red de Biomasa, para analizar sus impactos y estrategias de acción.

El cierre del encuentro se centró en la importancia estratégica de la comunicación para la justicia climática, con un Encuentro de Comunicación que reunió a activistas y medios de diversos territorios para fortalecer la Red de Comunicación para la Justicia Climática. Este espacio sirvió para compartir experiencias y formar en herramientas comunicacionales clave. Finalmente, el Foro Seminario Internacional “Cambiar el sistema, no el clima” consolidó el diálogo con testimonios de comunidades afectadas por falsas soluciones en Chile, análisis críticos y debates sobre los desafíos políticos y territoriales frente a la captura corporativa climática. La plenaria y espacios culturales concluyeron esta jornada, fortaleciendo la articulación regional y la apuesta colectiva por un cambio sistémico basado en justicia y respeto a los pueblos.

Denuncias y propuestas: el corazón del Encuentro

De forma pública se realizó el 22 de agosto en la Universidad de Playa Ancha el Foro Seminario Internacional «Cambiemos el sistema, no el clima», que sirvió también como plataforma para destacar y reivindicar las soluciones reales impulsadas por los pueblos originarios, campesinos y comunidades locales. En la instancia se subrayó la importancia de reconocer y respetar los saberes ancestrales, las prácticas de cuidado de la tierra y los modelos de vida que priorizan la sustentabilidad integral y la equidad. Este enfoque se propuso como un camino hacia la justicia climática auténtica, que no solo busca mitigar el cambio climático, sino transformar las estructuras socioeconómicas que lo generan.

En conjunto, el foro fortaleció el compromiso colectivo por construir alternativas desde abajo y visibilizar las luchas y propuestas que emergen desde los territorios en resistencia.

Así mismo el Mapa de Falsas Soluciones, elaborado por el Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador, fue uno de los ejes centrales del evento. El colectivo elaboró un informe que identificó 30 proyectos en Chile (como plantas de biomasa, hidroeléctricas, hidrógeno verde y minería de litio) que son presentados como alternativas verdes, pero que en realidad tienen fuertes impactos socioambientales, afectando áreas protegidas, territorios indígenas y ecosistemas frágiles.

Este IV Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática en Valparaíso representa un paso fundamental en la construcción de un movimiento regional unido y fortalecido, capaz de enfrentar con claridad y convicción las falsas soluciones que perpetúan la crisis climática. A través del intercambio de experiencias, el reconocimiento de los saberes ancestrales y la articulación de propuestas desde los territorios, se reafirma la urgencia de cambiar los modelos extractivistas y corporativos por sistemas basados en justicia, equidad y respeto por la vida. Este encuentro no solo visibiliza los impactos reales de las políticas climáticas actuales, sino que también impulsa un camino colectivo hacia una transición justa y transformadora, sostenida por la voz y la acción de los pueblos.

The post IV Encuentro Latinoamericano y del Caribe por la Justicia Climática: territorios en resistencia frente a las falsas soluciones al cambio climático appeared first on Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

EWG Verified® sets a gold standard with new eczema product category JR Culpepper September 30, 2025

WASHINGTON – As millions of Americans struggle to treat their eczema and decode product labels, the Environmental Working Group is offering a game-changing solution: a new EWG Verified® category that sets bold benchmarks for safety and transparency in over-the-counter, or OTC, eczema products.

EWG Verified products have to meet EWG’s strictest standards for ingredient safety, health and full transparency. Four eczema products from HealthyBaby, Mustela and hypothesis meet these standards. Their inclusion in this new EWG Verified category signals to consumers that these eczema products have undergone rigorous review and represent a trusted choice for families managing eczema.

A new standard 

“Our babies’ skin is more sensitive and permeable than an adult’s, and when eczema compromises that barrier, it becomes even more vulnerable to everything in our environment,” said Shazi Visram, founder and chief executive officer of HealthyBaby. “Following on HealthyBaby’s first ever EWG Verified diaper, we’re so proud to introduce the first-ever EWG Verified eczema cream for babies that protects the skin barrier and microbiome while soothing irritation safely without synthetic chemicals.

“As a mom of two, I know the heartbreak of watching a baby struggle with eczema, and parents deserve the peace of mind that what they’re putting on their child’s body is truly safe,” she added.

HealthyBaby’s Our Eczema Remedy was the first eczema care product to earn the EWG Verified mark and is expected to hit the market in early 2026.

“We’re thrilled to celebrate HealthyBaby, Mustela and hypothesis for meeting the rigorous standards set by EWG,” said Jocelyn Lyle, EWG’s executive vice president of mission and partnerships. 

“We're giving consumers what they’ve always wanted and deserved: a clear and trustworthy way to choose safer, healthier eczema products for their families,” she added. “The EWG Verified program continues to grow, making shopping for eczema products stress-free.”

Eczema, a condition that causes dry, flaky skin, affects roughly 10% of the population, including more than 9.6 million children, according to the National Eczema Association. The irritated skin barrier can leave people more vulnerable to harsh chemicals or allergens. 

The EWG Verified eczema standard combines standard EWG Verified product hazard scoring and ingredient restrictions with additional considerations about potential allergens and active ingredients.

Families dealing with eczema should work with their health care provider to develop a treatment plan, including potential OTC product recommendations.  

The program launches with four products:

• Healthybaby – Our Eczema Remedy
• hypothesis – Eczema Precision Hydrogel
• hypothesis – Eczema Therapy Cream
• Mustela – Stelatopia Intense Eczema Relief Skin Protectant

Science-driven benchmarks

Navigating the world of OTC eczema products can be a confusing and frustrating experience for families trying to find relief. With so many products on the market, it’s often difficult to figure out which have safer ingredients for sensitive, compromised skin. 

Families may struggle to find OTC products that help address eczema symptoms and also meet ingredient safety and transparency standards. 

EWG Verified eczema products give families a clear option by requiring full ingredient disclosure, sensitive skin testing and non-steroid active ingredients.

“Adding eczema products to the EWG Verified program represents a crucial step forward in eczema care,” said Oliver Liu, Ph.D, co-founder of hypothesis. 

“Building on their longstanding commitment to rigorous safety standards, EWG has created a certification that recognizes eczema-prone skin’s unique needs – and ensures products meet the exacting standards that sensitive, barrier-compromised skin requires,” she added. “This seal helps consumers navigate the complex world of eczema products with confidence.”

The addition of these products to the EWG Verified program builds upon EWG’s decades-long track record of empowering consumers to make healthier choices through science-based standards and transparency about ingredients, especially in personal care products. 

“At Mustela, supporting families with safe and effective skincare has been our mission since 1950,” said Meena Rana, the company’s assistant vice president of quality, regulatory affairs and customer service. 

“Because eczema can be especially challenging for parents and children, we sought EWG verification for our eczema care products, giving families the reassurance that Mustela products are gentle, effective and safe for the whole family,” Rana said.

“We’re proud to be one of the first brands ever to receive this recognition, for our Stelatopia Intense Eczema Relief, an OTC treatment. The mark underscores both the rigor of our formulas and our dedication to clean, transparent skincare,” she added.

Choosing safer products

EWG Verified takes the guesswork out of shopping and allows consumers to treat their symptoms with brands and products they can trust. 

“As a toxicologist and mom of a child with eczema, I’m excited EWG has expanded our Verified standard into this space,” said Kaley Beins, director of ingredient safety for EWG Verified. 

“You shouldn’t need to be a scientist to choose safer eczema products for yourself or your family. We’ve prioritized ingredient safety and skin sensitivity so you can look for the EWG Verified mark when searching for eczema products you can trust,” she added.

Shoppers can find the complete list of EWG Verified OTC eczema products here.

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

HealthyBaby, Mustela and hypothesis products meet EWG’s rigorous science-backed standards for ingredient safety and transparency Press Contact JR Culpepper jr.culpepper@ewg.org (202) 779-9990 October 1, 2025

We worked hard throughout FY24 to bring our vision of a fair energy future to life — one that is clean, accessible, and affordable to everyone. We believe we need new energy systems that are powered by the sun and wind, not by coal, oil and gas, and that are rooted in local needs: respecting cultures and traditions, creating jobs and income, supporting communities to grow and thrive, and protecting both people and nature. 

We did this in many ways. We spoke up at international meetings, pushed governments to create better energy laws, and demanded fair and fast climate funding. These big actions are important — and they’re often what people see the most. 

But a lot of our work happens behind the scenes: helping local groups identify where action is most impactful, planning strong actions, giving them training and tools, and building powerful networks. In short, we’re helping shape the future of the climate movement, making it stronger, smarter and more connected. The Our Own Power Network is a great example of our vision in action. 

As we expanded our strategy from stopping fossil fuels – the cause of the climate crisis – to also pushing for real and fair energy solutions, we saw something was missing. People all over the world were excited about clean energy and working on local projects. But many of these efforts were happening alone, they weren’t connected to each other – and  their success stories weren’t travelling far enough.

Our first step towards closing this gap was to create “Our Own Power”. This free toolkit is the result of working closely with local activists and communities around the world. The toolkit, available in five languages, gives step-by-step advice on how to start renewable energy projects, get funding, work through local rules and achieve lasting wins. It also shares real stories from communities who are already putting all those learnings to practice. So far, almost 40,000 people have visited the website, and 14,000 have downloaded the toolkit, mostly from countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia – places that are often most impacted by climate change, even though they have contributed the least to causing it. 

The toolkit marked the start of our building a strong, connected Our Own Power Network. This new global network, officially launched in early September 2024, offers an invitation to groups working with clean and fair energy solutions to the climate crisis. More than 200 people joined us for our first online meeting, and by the end of that month, 89 groups had become part of the network – including farmers’, women’s, faith and youth groups.

And the network kept growing fast since then!

Our Own Power gives communities the tools, training and global support they need to shift from fossil fuels to clean, local energy. It’s about reimagining what’s possible: a future where energy comes from the sun and the wind and is controlled by people, not corporations. Together, we are building a movement to make a clean energy future a reality.

 

As a young woman from a small island who is actually seeing the impacts of climate change in my daily life, I often felt powerless because I felt like I had no control over these uncomfortable things. With the Our Own Power Network, the community has given me a reinvigorated appreciation for the strength and resilience of people who face adversity and adapt to it. We can learn together and take action for the better tomorrow we all want!

– Katrina Khan-Roberts, @TnTClimate, Trinidad and Tobago

The Our Own Power Network is the best place to share practical experience on how communities get their power back, acquire innovative skills, and get started on community-led renewable initiatives. It is amazing how much knowledge sits with this community, just waiting to be tapped or co-created in the sessions!

– Peter Owiti, Wote Youth Development Projects, Kenya

Being part of the Our Own Power Network has given me a crucial perspective on how community energy can work in different parts of the world. It also helps me understand the power struggles that communities face in our current economic system, with concrete stories and examples.

– Chris Vrettos, REScoop.eu, Greece

This is a story from 350.org’s 2024 Annual Report

Explore the report

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Taufu’i ‘Ae Valu Naufahu has been a dedicated member of 350 Tonga, a 350 local group, since 2010. Over the years, he has organized activist networks, direct actions, and political advocacy – both locally and internationally – to defend the Pacific islands and the future of his people. For him, climate action is not just about survival – it’s about belonging.

“I have a daughter who’s turning nine this year. I want to secure a safe and protected future for her, my nieces and my nephews. I look for solutions to stop the climate crisis, because this may be the only way that they will be able to experience our islands along with the nature, traditions, and community as I did when I was young”. 

Taufu’i ‘Ae was instrumental in shaping and leading the “Our Pawa” campaign. As a part of the Council of Elders from Polynesia, he helped craft 350 Pacific’s strategic plans. During the PIFL meeting in Tonga in August, he organized events to engage civil society and the youth movement, ensuring their voices were part of critical climate discussions. 

The Pacific is on the frontlines of the climate crisis – rising seas, stronger hurricanes, homes and livelihoods lost, entire communities at risk. Yet, activists like Taufu’i ‘Ae stand as beacons of hope and power in the fight for climate justice. Now, he focuses on empowering youth to take climate action, believing that intergenerational collaboration is the key to a just and livable future:

“My generation knows that for the Pacific to survive, we need to end the age of fossil fuels. But we don’t just want to survive, we want the next generations to thrive! That means securing access to safe, affordable and renewable energy. The youth are the islands of the future. They should and will lead the way – and I am ready to stand beside them as new leadership rises.” 

In the coming years, Taufu’i ‘Ae plans to train and mentor high school students in Tonga, equipping them with the tools to push for renewables. With his deep connections and lifelong experience as a climate activist, he aims to amplify their vision for a locally-led energy transition, ensuring national policies reflect the needs and voices of communities – from the ground up.

This is a story from 350.org’s 2024 Annual Report

Explore the report

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