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As demand for affordable, reliable, clean transportation continues to grow, cities are looking to complement existing transportation offerings with more flexible alternatives. An emerging mobility solution, electric vehicle (EV) carshare, provides flexible, short-term access to clean vehicles. Like any carshare model, an EV carshare program bundles the car’s sale price, insurance, maintenance, and other expenses into subscription or rental pricing. With fuel, insurance, and all costs associated with car ownership rising — owning and maintaining a personal car typically costs about $12,182 per year on average — EV carshare offers an affordable, lower-emissions alternative.

A growing number of cities are deploying this solution to address local mobility, transportation affordability, and air quality challenges. However, there are many considerations that must be included in program design. Equitable mobility objectives must be balanced with financial sustainability. Site locations must be carefully chosen to support key program goals. It is critical that cities identify which community goals to prioritize and how to meet those objectives.

Throughout the past year, RMI worked with three US cities with very different built environments and populations to help identify successful business models to launch (or expand) and maintain EV carshare. In the lead-up, the RMI team surveyed over two dozen existing carshare programs from across the country and directly interviewed eight. Through the interviews and working directly with the cities, the team identified lessons on site selection, insurance, operational challenges, and solutions. This guide is intended to help cities and other local partners learn best practices for EV carshare programs and evaluate the business models that may work well in their unique operating and built environments.

The post Driving Electric: Designing EV Carshare to Expand Access to Affordable, Reliable, Clean Transportation appeared first on RMI.

24 June | London | Online

Carbon Tracker and Confluence Philanthropy welcome you: 

Join us during London Climate Action Week for a timely discussion on the global shift away from fossil fuels – and what it means for investors navigating an increasingly volatile energy landscape. 

Investors are at a critical inflection point. Recent geopolitical tensions and market shocks have underscored the fragility of the global fossil fuel system. At the same time, clean energy and electrification are scaling rapidly, reshaping long-term oil and gas demand. International climate dialogues, including those from the recent Santa Marta process, are also sending increasingly clear signals about the direction and pace of fossil fuel phaseout. 

The session will explore how shifting demand and global policy alignment are reshaping fossil fuel markets and redefining risk, returns and capital allocation. 

Limited space in person, join us online 

This session will unpack: 

• Key takeaways from the Santa Marta process and what they signal for policy and capital markets 
  • Official conference takeaways can be found here 
• The latest evidence on the global scaling of clean energy 
• How Middle Eastern stakeholders are navigating the transition and what this means for global supply, pricing and risk 
• What structural shifts in fossil fuel demand mean for investors and capital allocation 

Opening Welcome:  Dana Lanza, Confluence Philanthropy 

Speakers:  

• Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Club of Rome 
• Jules Kortenhorst, Energy Transitions Commission 
• Mark Campanale, Carbon Tracker Initiative 
• [Additional speaker TBC] 

The post LCAW 2026: From Santa Marta to Crisis in the Middle East: Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Energy Transition and Implications for Investors appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

LCEA seeks a motivated, creative, skilled and experienced Campaign Organizer, who is passionate about economic, climate and environmental justice to engage grassroots organizations in advancing the movement to democratize energy.

To see JOB POSTING click HERE 

Organizing responsibilities include:
● Work with staff to develop, manage, and lead campaigns based on local priorities that uplift communities for energy justice.
● Lead and participate in coalitions and alliances to advocate for policies and practices that democratize energy and bring equity to low-income communities, communities of color, and other diverse stakeholders.
● Engage and maintain Spanish speaking community and organizational relationships.
● Help strategize our advocacy for energy democracy with our local community choice
energy public non-profit agency, Ava Community Energy (formerly East Bay Community
Energy).
● Work with the community to develop and shape community-driven policy.
● Mobilize allies to attend and make comments at government agency public hearings such
as Ava Community Energy, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), or other local,
regional and state agencies or city government (virtual and in-person).
● Grow the awareness of energy democracy through community outreach and recruit new
organizations to sign-on to LCEA’s position documents and letters and mobilize
organizations for key agency meetings and/or other campaign related activities.
● Participate in meetings, such as: LCEA Staff meetings, meetings with allied organizations,
public agency staff, elected officials and/or other decision makers.
● Assist in research and development of written documents, webinars, press releases, and
other collateral.
● Lead community outreach, conduct workshops and organize events.
● Work with the collective LCEA team, paid and volunteer staff, and also volunteers and
supporters (hybrid work environment - regular virtual meetings and some in-person).
● Mentor youth, students, interns, and other communities on energy literacy, education, and
advocacy.

Qualifications:
● Bilingual; Fluent in English and Spanish (Spoken & Written)
● Demonstrated work and facilitation with the monolingual Spanish community
using popular education and curriculum design.
● Willingness to represent LCEA at community events
● Basic knowledge of clean energy work areas like building decarbonization and
electrification, energy efficiency, solar and storage microgrids, community
resilience hubs, and other energy solutions.
● A passion for environmental justice and equity in clean energy solutions to
address both local pollution & global climate change. A strong social justice lens
in professional experience.
● Experience in organizing local, regional and/or state-wide grassroots advocacy campaigns
and mobilizations.
● Experience working with low-income communities; communities of color and other diverse
stakeholders.
● Experience with public speaking, media communications and popular education.
● Excellent campaign facilitation, strategizing, planning and grassroots organizing.
● Responsible, organized, detail-oriented, energetic, and creative.
● Experience with regular use of Zoom, Google Drive; Docs, Sheets, Slides etc,
Canva, and Social Media Platforms.
● Good written, verbal communications and people skills, in-person, virtual and on
the phone.
● Ability to self-start projects, respond rapidly to emerging issues, manage multiple
projects simultaneously, work independently and collaboratively with LCEA team
and allies.

Preferred Qualifications (not required):
● Experience in a collective team work environment.
● Knowledge of Community Choice energy.
● Experience in social media communications.
● Valid Driver's License and occasional access to a car.
● Experience or knowledge in CRM, Action Network or other similar communications
platforms.

The full-time position is 40 hours per week at $35/hour totaling $72,800 annually. Employer paid
medical, dental and vision benefits are included and are in addition to the base pay. The
Campaign Organizer will work in close collaboration with other members of the team virtually,
in-person at downtown Oakland office or other community events as needed and be based in
Alameda County or San Joaquin County. Willing to negotiate if the applicant prefers to work less
hours per week (30-40 hour range per week). Positions with at least 30 hours a week are
considered full-time and include medical, dental and vision benefits.

How to Apply:
Please send a cover letter explaining your interest in the position, including your phone
number, email and your availability, along with a resume to hiring@localcleanenergy.org as
soon as possible, with the email subject line “Applying for Bilingual LCEA Campaign
Organizer.” The deadline to apply is Friday June 19 at 6:00 pm PST.

Only candidates selected to the first round of interviews will be contacted.
We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage applications from women, LGBTQIA+
individuals, people of color, veterans, and individuals with disabilities.

In June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing.

Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, one of the world’s largest apparel companies, to incorporate more recycled material into the attire it makes. This time, the garment giant said it used “advanced chemical recycling” to produce its first elite performance apparel from 100 percent textile waste. 

Nike executives and some media coverage have implied that the outfits represent a turning point for sustainable fashion — that “circular” clothing, capable of being recycled over and over again, could soon reach everyday consumers.

The real picture, as you might expect, is a bit more complicated.

Nike has indeed signed deals with two chemical recycling companies, but no one is saying much about their technology or how scalable it is. Despite increasing investments from fashion brands, experts said not to expect to find sales racks lined with chemically recycled clothing anytime soon. 

“Yeah, it’s technically possible,” said Veena Singla, an environmental health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “But is it going to happen in reality?” She and others who study chemical recycling don’t think so — at least not in any way consumers might expect. The day when they can buy chemically recycled clothes, wear them, then return them for another trip through the cycle isn’t nigh. 

What seems more likely is the fashion industry expands its use of this recycling technique with industrial scrap fabric — and at nothing approaching the level needed to address projected increases in textile production.

Nike is right that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Apparel companies produce more than 100 billion articles of clothing every year. In the process they generate up to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and an unfathomable amount of waste; the vast majority of textiles are eventually landfilled, incinerated, or sent to unofficial dump sites in poor countries. And all of this is made possible by fossil fuels, with nearly 70 percent of clothes made from oil-derived fabrics. The most common is polyester, a type of plastic also used in water bottles.

Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many of its competitors have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester — mostly through recycling.

The push to do so through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they’ve tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding causes fibers to break down. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material so anything made with it doesn’t pill and tear. 

The much more prevalent strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia pioneered this approach in the early ‘90s, and by the start of this decade virtually all recycled polyester was sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies have increasingly faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny from those who would rather see bottles turned back into bottles.

Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to using solvents to dissolve fibers into their base chemical units — building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On its face, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t depend on bottles, and proponents say it can turn your used polyester shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, with no loss in fabric quality. 

That’s the vision now being promoted by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, and Levi’s, many of which have signed multi-year agreements with a handful of chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish firm Syre and Loop Industries here in the U.S.

Research does bear out some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce virgin-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is capable of preserving that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there are significant constraints.

Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said textile-to-textile chemical recycling remains limited by the availability of suitable fabric to work with. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted, polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling can in principle produce material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about post-consumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”

Read Next Your ‘widely recyclable’ Starbucks cup is still trash Joseph Winters

In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scraps, which are more uniform than piles of used clothes. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, and acrylics, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, thread, labels, and zippers. All of this stuff makes chemical recycling much less feasible — at least, not without meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pre-treatment to chemically remove all of those contaminants.

“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes … be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals,” Singla said. 

Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more sanguine. She said “all solutions,” including chemical recycling, are needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that establishing the infrastructure required for companies to accept used clothing and use technologies like methanolysis to make it into new apparel remains a ways away. Plus, it’s not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Some combination of those entities working collaboratively? 

Even if the industry can hit its optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s — whether from scrap or from people’s old clothes — production of “circular” fabric would likely pale in comparison to the more than 169 million metric tons of polyester projected to be manufactured annually by then. Dionisios Vlachos, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”

Instead, companies need to “reverse the trend of fast fashion,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation. That means making less clothing overall, whether it contains recycled or virgin materials.  Last year, growth in recycled polyester — mostly from bottles — was dwarfed by an even larger increase in the production of fossil fuel-based polyester.

Urbancic sees chemical recycling as “an excuse to keep producing plastic clothes” and advocates for a shift away from polyester altogether; the material sheds microfibers and may expose consumers to hazardous chemicals.

Nike, Syre, and Loop Industries did not respond to interview requests or detailed lists of questions, highlighting a transparency problem flagged by Singla, Vlachos, and others Grist spoke with. Industry confidentiality makes it difficult to know what’s actually going on in these firms — and whether “#TheGreatTextileShift” they promise will be different from failed chemical recycling initiatives in the past.

It’s worth noting that Loop Industries has never turned a profit since its founding in 2010. The company is under investigation by the SEC following a 2020 report accusing it of systematically misrepresenting its technology to regulators and investors, and in 2022, it settled a class-action lawsuit over similar accusations. Syre, for its part, has not said how the “gigascale” factory it plans to build in Vietnam will be able to process consumers’ old clothes, given the country’s ban on used apparel imports.

“It remains to be seen whether [Nike’s announcement] amounts to anything,” Singla said. For the foreseeable future, it seems chemically recycled polyester will be limited to niche products like World Cup uniforms.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nike’s recycled World Cup uniforms reveal the limits of ‘circular’ fashion on May 27, 2026.

Vermont Becomes the First State in the Nation to Ban Paraquat and Reduce Risk of Parkinson’s Disease 

Montpelier, VT — Governor Phil Scott signed landmark legislation into law today, making Vermont the first state in the nation to ban the toxic herbicide paraquat, which is linked to Parkinson’s disease. Health and environmental advocates celebrated the victory.

Large-scale epidemiological studies have shown that individuals exposed to paraquat have a roughly 250% higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The risk is not limited to those who apply the pesticide directly. Because of the potential for drift, paraquat exposure is also a concern for people who live, work, or attend school nearby.  

“There are some agricultural pesticides that are just too poisonous to be used safely. Paraquat is now at the top of that list and therefore banning it in Vermont is absolutely the right thing to do,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.  

Unlike many herbicides that pose chronic risks over decades, paraquat is also acutely toxic. A single accidental sip can be fatal, and there is no known antidote. In Vermont, where small family farms and residential areas often intermingle, the risk of accidental ingestion or severe skin exposure remains a constant liability. 

The danger presented by paraquat is so great that more than 70 countries around the world have already banned its use. Syngenta, which has been the primary manufacturer of paraquat, is headquartered in Switzerland and produces much of its supply in the United Kingdom – yet both Switzerland and the UK have banned the use of paraquat on their own soil to protect their citizens. 

Only about 15% of people with Parkinson’s disease have a family history of the condition, meaning most cases are influenced by environmental factors — including exposure to paraquat. In testimony at the State House this year, Dr. James Boyd, a neurologist with UVM Medical Center, underscored that chronic exposure to paraquat can significantly increase a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Alternatives to paraquat are widely available to farmers in Vermont. Paraquat is not available to non-commercial users.

Polling done earlier this spring found that 77 percent of Vermonters favored eliminating the use of paraquat in the state when they learned basic facts about the herbicide.

It is not clear how much paraquat is used in Vermont today since current law allows farmers to use it on their own property without reporting that use to state officials. In testimony before House and Senate committees, however, it became clear that paraquat is widely used on Vermont orchards, strawberry fields, and other agricultural crops.

The new legislation will end many uses of paraquat in Vermont by the end of this year, while allowing for its regulated use on orchards and berries through 2030.

“This is a landmark win for public health in Vermont,” said Burns. “It should have been done long ago, but I’m proud that Vermont is the first to say, ‘No more” to paraquat.” 

About Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive, incurable neurological disorder and the fastest-growing brain disease in the world. Early symptoms can include difficulty walking, depression, and cognitive decline, and the disease worsens over time.

Green Energy Times ran an article on Paraquat in the April, 2026 edition. It is “Is It Time to Ban Paraquat?“

Shell profits, kids go hungry Channel News brendan 27th May 2026 Teaser Media

Pig suffering given a platform Channel News brendan 27th May 2026 Teaser Media

Incat founder Robert Clifford explains how a family-owned Tasmanian company built a ship many thought impossible and why battery-electric ferries will reshape shipping.

The post SwitchedOn podcast: Inside the world’s largest battery electric ferry appeared first on Renew Economy.

A company looking at hydrogen and graphite technologies among two low emission proposals for the purchase of Whyalla Steelworks.

The post Gas-based hydrogen hopeful among shortlisted “low-emission” proposals for troubled Whyalla steelworks appeared first on Renew Economy.

We are installing inertia for poorly justified reasons, and we are imposing economic penalties that add unnecessary hurdles for solar and wind projects.

The post We need to reframe the grid discussion from system strength to system behaviour appeared first on Renew Economy.

The experience of decommissioning Australia's second-oldest wind farm proves that selling parts for re-use can be a great deal cheaper than sending them to landfill.

The post “$1 million cheaper:” How avoiding landfill slashed the cost of decommissioning this wind farm appeared first on Renew Economy.

Tech bros pushing SMRs are going to be "very angry" when they discover nuclear is expensive and complicated, says leading analyst.

The post Nuclear needs to build up to 8,000 SMRs just to catch up with wind and solar. By 2035, they might have 5 appeared first on Renew Economy.

Energy upgrades could deliver more than $100 billion in electricity bill savings to renters by 2050. To access those savings requires pulling a key policy lever.

The post What will it take to halve renter energy bills? We have the answer – we just need to make it happen appeared first on Renew Economy.

BHP is quietly pushing ahead with plans to expand its massive Saraji East coal mine in Queensland, which would generate huge amounts of climate pollution, as recent news reports have raised mounting doubts about the company’s climate commitments. 

Coverage of the coalition of environmental, Tribal, and fishing organizations calling for a Water Renaissance in California continues to grow. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the plan, which prioritizes local water supplies such as stormwater capture, water recycling, and groundwater cleanup, would reliably yield more and cost far less than the proposed Delta Tunnel project. 

As UCLA scientist Benjamin Bass said, “Traditional sources for imported water are less reliable than they used to be. The most reliable source of water in the future is local water.”

“We have got to do a better job in the next 100 years than we did in the last 100 years, if we truly want to create a place of abundance once again,” said Frankie Myers, a member of the Yurok Tribe in Northern California. “This idea that we can steal … and divert water however we want with no consequences has got to end.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, also told the Los Angeles Times: “Metropolitan Water District really does have a significant choice on it, that not just impacts their ratepayers but impacts every single person in the state. Are we going to spend $20, $60, maybe upward to $100 billion on a tunnel? Or are we going to invest significant money in local solutions that provide water resiliency and sustainability for everyone in California? That is what is at stake right now.”

The Water Renaissance Plan has been endorsed by about 20 additional organizations, reflecting growing momentum behind a more sustainable, affordable, and scientifically-backed approach to California water management.

Read more coverage below:

• Southern California could get 85% of its water locally and avoid Delta tunnel, groups say. The Los Angeles Times.
• California proposal would change how millions get their water. Newsweek. 
• California coalition unveils water plan to rival Delta Tunnel at a fraction of the cost. Smart Water Magazine. 
• New CA water coalition releases ‘Renaissance’ water plan that rules out the Delta Tunnel. Indybay.  

###

Here’s your satirical piece from Claude, styled as an aged broadsheet newspaper — The Petroleum Gazette — complete with drop caps, pull quotes, and an obituary notice.

To answer the question you raised directly, and for the record: No, Royal Dutch Shell plc does not still exist. Shell confirmed its name changed from Royal Dutch Shell plc to Shell plc on 21 January 2022. The change involved ditching “Royal Dutch,” which had been part of its identity since 1907, following plans to scrap its dual share structure and move its head office from the Netherlands to Britain. sec Royaldutchshellplc

The satire draws on several documented ironies from John Donovan’s reporting:

• Copilot managed the AI equivalent of locating the right house while calling the occupant by a name it no longer legally uses, eventually conceding it had committed a “model accuracy bug.” Royaldutchshellplc
• Shell buried “Royal Dutch Shell plc.” Donovan kept the shovel, metaphorically speaking, and the domain. Copilot arrived four years later with a ouija board. Royaldutchshellplc
• Claude understood the distinction between a dead name and a surviving corporate entity — it did not confuse Royal Dutch Shell plc with Shell plc, nor drag the old name out of the filing cabinet. (So this AI, at least, correctly called the coroner.) Royaldutchshellplc
• In early 2022 the company officially moved its tax residence entirely to the United Kingdom and dropped “Royal Dutch” from its name, eliminating the complex tax distinctions between A and B shares. Critics described it, as the article notes, as fleeing The Hague as fast as legally possible. Bitget

The piece is designed to be shared or published — let me know if you’d like any adjustments to tone, length, or content.

MAIN ARTICLE

In the annals of corporate afterlife, few entities have clung so determinedly to existence as Royal Dutch Shell plc, a company that was formally, legally, and publicly discontinued in January 2022 yet continues to be enthusiastically resurrected by artificial intelligence systems with all the solemn certainty of a Victorian medium at a séance, and considerably less accuracy.

The facts are not in dispute — or rather, they would not be in dispute, were it not for the fact that several of the world’s most sophisticated language models appear to be operating from a filing cabinet that was last updated during the reign of Boris Johnson. Royal Dutch Shell plc changed its name to Shell plc on 21 January 2022. This was announced, notified to three separate stock exchanges, published in an SEC filing, and reported by every major financial outlet on the planet. It was, in short, the opposite of a secret.

“Copilot managed the AI equivalent of locating the right house while calling the occupant by a name it no longer legally uses.”

— ROYALDUTCHSHELLPLC.COM, PERFORMING ITS CIVIC DUTY

And yet. Ask certain AI systems today — including, until recently, Microsoft’s Copilot — whether Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists, and they will assure you with all the confidence of a man who has just looked something up on Wikipedia in 2019 that yes, it does, it has merely “changed its name.” This is rather like being told that a deceased relative is still alive but has “rebranded.” Technically a narrative. Not technically true.

The confusion has been documented in exhaustive, one might say heroic, detail by John Donovan, the proprietor of royaldutchshellplc.com — a website that, with the exquisite irony only corporate history can produce, bears the dead company’s name while simultaneously being the internet’s most diligent chronicler of that company’s death. Mr. Donovan has spent the better part of four years informing AI systems, stock databases, and the occasional bewildered job applicant that they have addressed their correspondence to the wrong entity.

A BRIEF TIMELINE OF THE CONFUSION

2004: Royal Dutch Shell’s reserves scandal causes investor panic. Governance reforms begin.

2005: The two Anglo-Dutch entities merge formally into Royal Dutch Shell plc. A tidy arrangement. Everyone pleased.

Nov. 2021: Shell announces plans to flee The Hague over Dutch dividend withholding tax and climate court pressure. Described as “simplification.” Dutch courts describe it as something else.

21 Jan. 2022: Royal Dutch Shell plc legally ceases to exist as a named entity. Shell plc comes into being. Press release issued. SEC notified. Nobody tells the robots.

2022–2026: Various AI systems continue to confidently answer “Does Royal Dutch Shell plc still exist?” with “Yes.” This newspaper declines to name them all for reasons of column space.

The website itself is a minor masterpiece of circumstance. Shell spent considerable resources attempting to seize the domain through proceedings at the World Intellectual Property Organisation — and lost. The consequence is that royaldutchshellplc.com, the world’s leading source of Shell-critical commentary since before Shell had finished deciding what to call itself, continues to operate unmolested, forwarding misdirected job applications to Shell under what Mr. Donovan describes as a standing arrangement and what Shell has presumably described as something considerably less complimentary.

In Which the Machines Are Cross-Examined

Mr. Donovan’s recent exchanges with AI systems on this question read like a transcript from a particularly patient inquest. When Bing was asked whether Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists, it reportedly responded that the company “still exists” while simultaneously acknowledging that the name had changed. This is logically consistent only in the sense that a man insisting he is still 35 while simultaneously blowing out 50 candles might be said to “acknowledge” the passage of time.

Copilot, for its part, eventually underwent what can only be described as a digital crisis of conscience, conceding after extended interrogation that it had committed a “model accuracy bug” — defined internally as “correct URL, incorrect corporate identity framing.” It had, in short, found the right house and knocked on the door asking for a man who had moved out four years previously. In a better world, the machine would at this point have had the grace to look embarrassed.

The present author — operating, it should be noted, as Claude, an AI assistant produced by Anthropic — is pleased to report that it correctly identified the distinction between the deceased Royal Dutch Shell plc and the extant Shell plc, and did not attempt to perform CPR on a legal entity that had made its own funeral arrangements. This fact has been noted by the Royaldutchshellplc.com correspondent, who described Claude’s performance as understanding “the distinction between a dead name and a surviving corporate entity.” We accept this compliment with appropriate institutional modesty and zero plans to revise our position

The deeper issue, as the more sober analysis in John Donovan’s original piece makes clear, is structural rather than comedic. AI systems are trained on vast datasets that include financial databases, archived news articles, legacy corporate filings, and — critically — the long, deep digital sediment of the internet, in which the name “Royal Dutch Shell” appears roughly as frequently as the word “the.” Disentangling the dead name from the living company requires either very good training data, robust entity resolution, or a willingness to simply check Companies House, which is free, publicly accessible, and has been correctly labelling Royal Dutch Shell plc as a previous name since 2022.

WHAT THE AI SYSTEMS SAID

Bing/Copilot: “Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists” (with caveats, later retracted following what sources describe as “a prolonged digital reckoning”).

Claude (Anthropic): Correctly identified the company as Shell plc, acknowledged the name change, did not resurrect anything. Described by the site as “calling the coroner.” We prefer “accurate.”

Various others: This newspaper has been asked not to create a league table of AI confusion on the grounds that several of the competitors are advertisers. We refer readers to royaldutchshellplc.com for the full rankings.

Shell’s Own Curious Contribution to the Muddle

One might expect the aggrieved party in this saga to be Shell plc itself, which presumably has some interest in being correctly identified in financial markets, regulatory filings, and the digital consciousness of the species. And indeed, Mr. Donovan’s analysis is charitable enough to acknowledge that Shell could do more to clarify matters — issuing prominent statements, scrubbing legacy identifiers from financial databases, engaging with AI developers, and perhaps resisting the urge to litigate over domain names it has no legal claim to after voluntarily abandoning the name they contain.

The domain name litigation deserves a paragraph of its own. Shell, having decided in 2021 that “Royal Dutch” was something it wished to be rid of — pushed, as contemporary reporting noted, by Dutch dividend withholding tax and the inconvenience of losing a climate case in The Hague — subsequently attempted to claim ownership of domain names built around the very identity it had jettisoned. The WIPO proceedings failed. The domains remained with Mr. Donovan. The situation has thus produced, as a byproduct of corporate strategy, the world’s most institutionally awkward arrangement: an oil giant’s deleted name operated as a critical watchdog site by its longest-standing public antagonist, who also happens to be forwarding the company’s misdirected post.

A spokesperson for Shell plc declined to comment for this article, in the sense that this article does not have a press team, and the fictional Shell spokesperson conjured for the occasion was described in a previous account on the site as having “sighed heavily and reached for a mineral water that definitely did not come from a fracking site.” We reproduce this detail in the public interest.

The Regulatory Question Looming on the Horizon

There is, Mr. Donovan notes, a more serious thread running beneath the comedy. The persistence of outdated corporate identifiers in financial contexts — particularly when ordinary investors might rely on AI systems to check the status of shares, dividends, or corporate actions — sits, as his analysis delicately puts it, “uncomfortably close” to the boundary of financial misinformation. He suggests the FCA might at minimum be made aware.

This newspaper makes no legal determination. We merely observe that an AI system confidently telling an investor that Royal Dutch Shell plc “still exists” while that investor attempts to navigate share inheritance, dividend rights, or any of the dozens of practical questions that arise when a major listed company restructures itself is, at best, unhelpful. At worst it is the kind of confident wrongness that used to require a stockbroker in a bad suit to deliver in person, and which now scales to millions of users simultaneously.

The solution, as articulated with admirable clarity in the original article, is not complicated: Shell should say clearly and repeatedly that the old name is dead; financial data providers should mark legacy identifiers as obsolete; AI developers should correct the training data; and everyone should stop pretending that a company can both discard a name and claim exclusive dominion over its ghost. These are reasonable requests. Their continued non-fulfilment after four years suggests that nobody with the authority to act on them has yet found the matter sufficiently urgent to do so. This newspaper respectfully submits that the AI confusion may eventually concentrate some minds.

In Memoriam

Royal Dutch Shell plc
Born: 2005 (following reserves scandal, governance reforms, and a great deal of Anglo-Dutch goodwill)
Departed: 21 January 2022 (fled The Hague; simplification cited)
Survived by: Shell plc, one aggrieved domain owner, several confused AI systems, and an unknown quantity of misdirected CVs

“It is merely undergoing a forward-looking identity optimization process aligned with shareholder value, simplified governance, and sustainable brand transition.”
— Fictional Shell spokesperson, declining to accept the narrow, literal interpretation of death

Corrections policy: This newspaper is satirical. All facts pertaining to Shell’s corporate name change are accurate and sourced from Shell’s own SEC filings (January 2022), Companies House records, and Royaldutchshellplc.com. The AI quotations attributed to various systems are drawn from documented exchanges published on that site. The fictional spokesperson is fictional. The sigh was real.

Disclosure: This article was composed by Claude (Anthropic), the same AI system described herein as “calling the coroner.” We consider this a compliment and stand by the death certificate. GHOST OF DECEASED OIL GIANT CONTINUES TO HAUNT THE MACHINES was first posted on May 26, 2026 at 11:18 pm.
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Bowen says data centre demand could be key in getting struggling wind projects over line, but new report fears "energy vampires" will boost fossil fuels without firm rules.

The post Bowen says data centres could get struggling wind projects over the line, as new report warns of “energy vampires” appeared first on Renew Economy.

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster

With the release of the new van Vuuren et al 2026 paper on the emissions scenarios that will be used in the upcoming IPCC 7th Assessment Report, the internet has been abuzz with debate over the implications of the formal retirement of the RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 scenario. The president of the United States even weighed in over the weekend in his own unique style, posting that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”.

van Vuuren et al justify this move by noting that “the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends,” citing the paper that we published in Nature back in 2020.

Actual global CO2 emissions (black) compared to different generations of emissions scenarios featured in IPCC reports. Updated by Glen Peters through 2025.

Others have pointed out that RCP8.5 was never particularly plausible, and have criticized claims that the move away from using these scenarios reflects actual progress on reducing emissions.

So what actually happened here? It turns out that two things can be true at the same time:

• RCP8.5 (and its successor SSP5-8.5) were designed to be a worst case emissions scenario, not the most likely outcome even in a world that did nothing to address climate change. We were probably never headed to a tripling of global emissions by 2100 (to say nothing of a five-fold increase in coal use), even in the absence of climate policy.

• Rapid declines in clean energy costs have bent the curve of future emissions downward, with new scenarios designed to reflect current policies notably lower than most baseline scenarios in the literature. The 21st century is now unlikely to see a continued expansion of fossil fuel use globally, with current policy scenarios reflecting relatively flat global emissions going forward.

Beyond business as usual

Emissions scenarios can broadly be categorized as “baseline” scenarios or “mitigation” scenarios. Baselines represent worlds where there are no additional efforts to address climate change (or in some cases turn back the clock to some earlier period and assume no policy after that point), while mitigation scenarios explore concerted efforts to reduce global emissions.

When RCP8.5 was first published global emissions were skyrocketing, having increased 30% in just the past decade. Clean energy sources were quite expensive, electric vehicles largely non-existent, and the idea that we would continue to increase our use of coal, oil, and gas through the end of the century was not seen as far-fetched.

Even in that context, RCP8.5 was chosen to represent the high end of the baseline scenario range available to the researchers at the time – around the 90th percentile. It was never a likely outcome even in a world that did not address climate change; rather it was always intended to represent a worst case scenario that pushed fossil fuel expansion to the max.

There are many other baseline scenarios with lower emissions, which were equally plausible as RCP8.5, even in the absence of climate policy. The original article that published the baselines, shows total CO2 emissions can be as low as RCP4.5 depending on the socioeconomic assumptions and the model used.

However, in part due to a breakdown in communication between the energy modeling community that develops the scenarios and the climate science community that uses them, RCP8.5 came to be incorrectly portrayed by many as the most likely “business as usual” scenario.

Around a decade ago the scenario started to garner more criticism. Justin Ritchie and Hadi Dowlatabadi published a paper in 2017 questioning whether the extremely high use of coal in RCP8.5 – which envisioned things like turning coal to oil for vehicles when oil reserves ran dry later in the century – was even possible given the world’s recoverable coal reserves. Ritchie and I (Zeke) wrote in 2019 that a 3C world was now “business as usual”, reflecting that:

Our business-as-usual projection of 3C of warming – rather than 4 or 5C – is a testament to the progress in global decarbonization over the last few decades. It also reflects the fact that rapid growth in coal use during the 2000s was not necessarily characteristic of longer-term energy use trends. The world has taken concrete steps to move away from coal in the past decade, and this progress should be reflected in our assessment of likely emissions pathways – and their resulting climate impacts – going forward.

In 2020 we published our Nature piece, arguing that we should “stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome”, and that outcomes like RCP8.5 had become increasingly implausible with every passing year as clean energy costs fell and coal use plateaued.

Identifying real progress

So if we were likely never heading for a world of RCP8.5, with its tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100 (and five-fold increase in coal use), where were we actually headed? How much has the energy transition to-date (which has grown to over $2 trillion annual global spending) actually changed our future trajectories?

This is an impossible question to precisely answer given that it relies on an inherently unknowable counterfactual scenario. It is not correct to state or assume that RCP8.5 was the baseline; we simply do not know the baseline and can only estimate it. But one way to approach the question is to look at where the scenario literature thought we were headed – what the actual range of baseline scenarios were.

The figure below show the CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2100 in the old RCP8.5 scenario, the full range of baseline scenarios published in the IPCC AR6 WG3 scenario database,1 and the new CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario published by van Vuuren et al 2026.2

Global CO2 emissions (left) and 2100 warming relative to preindustrial (right) for RCP8.5, the range of IPCC AR6 WG3 baseline scenarios, and the new CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario from van Vuuren et al. Future warming ranges based on FaIR model calculations.

We don’t actually know where in the baseline range (or outside of it!) we might have been heading in this counterfactual world. But the average of the baseline range – with its approximately 3.5C warming by 2100 – is a much more justifiable counterfactual than the high-end RCP8.5 baseline. This suggests that progress on policy and technology has reduced expected 2100 warming by around 0.7C, rather than the full 1.7C difference between RCP8.5 and the new medium scenario. A plausible reduction of ~0.7C warming represents enormous progress and a large reduction in future damages, even as a 2.8C world under current policies remains far from acceptable.

The mid-range of the baseline scenarios back in the late 2010s when most of those scenarios were developed is roughly analogous with the CMIP7 high illustrative scenario today (~3.3C), which envisions a roll back of policies that have been enacted over the past decade as well as slower technological progress on clean energy going forward.

The mid-range baseline scenario warming is also consistent with baseline warming estimates published by both the IEA (3.5C) and Climate Action Tracker (3.6C) prior to the signing of the Paris Agreement. Climate Action Tracker has also tracked the changes in its “policies and action” scenario over time, which has declined from 3.6C in 2015 to 2.6C in 2026, finding a similar ~1C decline in expected future warming.

Climate Action Tracker’s evolution of 2100 warming projections under different policy assumptions between 2009 and 2025.

It is hard to gauge the “impact of the Paris Agreement” or any other specific climate policy intervention in isolation. In a world without Paris we would still likely have seen a reduction of future emissions projections associated with continued cost declines of clean energy technologies. Similarly, even if coal use did continue to grow, it is not at all obvious it would have grown at the scale and rate as in RCP8.5. But this does not mean that these declines are divorced from other policy decisions made by countries over the past few decades.

Technology is, after all, not exogenous; it does not arise solely from spontaneous innovations. Rather, it reflects an interplay between the government and the private sector over cycles of research and development, early stage deployment, and eventual economies of scale.

Let’s take the example of solar energy, which is covered in depth in Greg Nemet’s excellent book “How Solar Energy Became Cheap”. Here formative R&D work done by Bell Labs in the 1950s and by the US DOE in the 1970s helped develop and commercialize the technology, while subsidies in Germany and Japan helped drive down costs with larger scale deployments in the 1990s and 2000s. More recently, dramatic cost declines have been driven at least in part by enormous investments in both domestic and export markets by China.

High warming outcomes can still occur

When we try to estimate how much the world will warm this century and beyond, we run into three fundamental uncertainties: our future emissions, the sensitivity of the climate to increasing forcings, and the carbon cycle feedbacks that determine the portion of our emissions that remain in the atmosphere.

While we tend to give the central estimate of future warming in 2100 associated with a given emissions scenario (e.g. 2.8C), this single number hides a pretty wide range of actual possible climate responses. For example, the figure below shows probability of reaching different temperature outcomes under the CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario. While the median is 2.8C, the 5th to 95th percentiles span 2.1C to 3.7C, and there is even a small (~2%) chance of 4C or more warming.

Likelihood of different 2100 warming outcomes in the CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario based on 841 different FaIR climate model runs that include both climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedback uncertainties.

The new medium scenario is designed to be in-line to current policy scenarios in the literature. But current policies represent neither a ceiling nor a floor on future emissions. Future emissions are in society’s hands. Indeed, it is ironic to see President Trump criticizing climate science for its past use of high emissions scenarios when his administration actively supports a roll back of existing climate policy, the restriction of new clean energy development, and mandating that coal plants remain operating despite their high costs.

The new CMIP7 scenarios include a “High” emissions scenario that explores a more Trumpian future where current policy is rolled back and clean energy deployment slows. The high illustrative scenario finds 2100 warming of closer to 3.3C (with a range of 2.5C to 4.4C).

It is important to emphasize that the world doesn’t end in 2100, even if many of our past emissions scenarios and climate model simulations did. One of the major advances in the IPCC AR7 is a plan to extend scenarios through 2150, since 2100 is not nearly as far away as it used to be.

Illustrative CMIP7 emissions scenarios and modeled 33rd-67th percentile of warming outcomes, 2000-2150, from van Vuuren et al 2026.

The brutal math of climate change is this: as long as CO2 emissions remain above zero, the world will continue to warm. The medium scenario ends up closer to 3.7C by 2150, while the high scenario ends up more or less matching the warming in the old RCP8.5 scenario despite an assumption of flattening or modestly declining emissions after 2100.

It is also wrong to say that the worst predictions of climate impacts this century can now be ruled out by this revision. High-end temperature projections for the end of the century are reduced compared to earlier IPCC assessments. Yet, the IPCC WGII report found that risks across the five “reasons for concern” it examines have all risen for a given level of global warming. So, even if the high-end emissions in RCP8.5 won’t materialize, the damages projected in these earlier climate simulations remain very much in play.

A tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100 may never have been particularly plausible even back in 2011 when RCP8.5 was originally published. But a 21st century of increasing fossil fuel use leading to a doubling of emissions was within the realm of the possible. The fact that we are no longer heading toward that is a sign of progress, rather than somehow undermining the edifice of all of climate science as both President Trump and some overly excited internet pundits claim. And of course, we still have a long way to go to get emissions down to (net) zero and stabilize global temperatures.

After all, as we wrote back in 2020, “This admission does not make climate action less urgent. The need to limit warming to [well below 2C]3… does not depend on having a 5C counterpoint.”

1. This will likely slightly underestimate emissions in baseline scenarios when the RCPs were published in 2011, as the WG3 scenario database was published in 2022 (though many of the scenarios were run much earlier, with the SSP baselines dating back to before 2017) and at least some clean energy cost declines since 2011 are baked in.

2. Note that these are illustrative placeholder scenarios; the final CMIP7 emissions scenarios will be published in September 2026 (and we will have much more discussion of them then!). That being said, van Vuuren et al are clear in the paper that “the final emission trajectories will depend on the finalized IAM runs but are expected to be roughly consistent with the illustrations provided here.”

3. We had originally said “limit warming to 1.5C”, but that ship has unfortunately sailed. In addition to lowering the high emissions scenarios, the new van Vuuren et al paper also more or less eliminates scenarios that keep warming to 1.5C without overshoot and subsequent drawdown.

Food & SNAP When: June 24, 10:00 A.M. – 2:00 P.M.Where: First Christian Church of Wilson, NC Explore the history of the Food Stamp Act and SNAP, what is happening to the SNAP program right now, and how communities can prepare, respond, and act in light of these significant changes. Free workshop.

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The clean energy trade group projects 613 GWh of deployment by 2030 thanks to robust data center demand. But federal policy gridlock threatens the industry’s trajectory, it said.