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Türkiye and Australia risk losing their credibility as hosts of this year’s COP31 UN climate summit if they keep betting on fossil fuels at home, climate policy experts have warned. 

As governments are expected to continue fraught talks over how to advance the global transition away from oil, coal and gas in Antalya this November, both of the co-host countries are pursuing fossil fuel expansion at home, without a national timeline to phase out their use.

Türkiye has accelerated its rollout of wind and solar energy in recent years. But that progress has yet to make a dent in the country’s dependence on fossil fuels for power, as demand growth has outpaced the renewables build-out, new analysis by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) has found.

The share of electricity generated by burning coal and fossil gas – 56% in 2025 – has barely changed since 2019, and total fossil fuel use in the power sector, and the emissions it produces, are still rising, according to the report released on Friday.

The Turkish government has also signalled that fossil fuels will remain a central component of its energy mix and has outlined plans to expand the country’s burgeoning domestic gas production in the Black Sea. 

‘Need to demonstrate seriousness’

Australia, which will chair the Antalya negotiations, relies on fossil fuels for over 60% of its electricity, with coal alone still supplying 45%. According to experts, it lacks an ambitious plan to shift away from fossil fuels at home, relying heavily on carbon offsetting to reach its climate targets. 

Australia is also the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter and has plans to expand its coal and gas production, which is backed by significant government subsidies. It recently upset climate groups by approving an extension of the Saraji open-cut coal mine in Queensland.  

Türkiye says it has “final decision” at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations

Jennifer Morgan, a senior fellow with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and former climate envoy for Germany, said Türkiye and Australia need to demonstrate their seriousness about their COP presidency roles by leading by example on the energy transition.

“They have made progress in renewable energy,” she told reporters this week. “But I think their credibility – and their ability to therefore bring momentum and good outcomes to the COP – will depend on their taking further action at home.” 

Türkiye’s electrification homework

The co-hosts’ fossil fuel policies are being scrutinised in the run-up to the annual UN climate summit, with much riding on the signal climate diplomacy sends on the energy transition.

Türkiye has so far stopped short of putting any overt political capital behind the fossil fuel transition itself. It has instead been rallying support for a new global electrification target of 35% by 2035, seen as the centrepiece of this year’s non-negotiated Action Agenda put forward by Ankara.

Electrification emerges as COP31 priority

COP31 president Murat Kurum said last week the push to electrify economies – through measures like electric vehicles and heat pumps – will “automatically” lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

Türkiye’s own energy plan projects the country’s electrification rate would fall short on the global target and only hit 25% by 2035, according to the CAT report, which called for a “substantial step-change” in electrification policies and the deployment of more renewable power and grid infrastructure. 

Coal still dominant

CAT’s analysts also warned that, without a parallel phase-out of fossil fuels, rising electricity demand risks being met in part by coal and gas, failing to deliver the emissions reductions the electrification target is meant to achieve. 

Türkiye has had some success in its clean energy build-out: the share of electricity generation from wind and solar rose to 22% in 2025, up from 12% in 2020, according to the CAT report.

But coal’s role in Türkiye’s electricity mix has also grown, in both its share and absolute terms, over the past decade. And while reliance on fossil gas has declined overall, it still plays an important role in Ankara’s energy policy, which is pushing to boost domestic gas production in the Black Sea.

Pilot boats assist the Osman Gazi as it navigates the Bosphorus on its way to the Black Sea on May 29, 2025 in Istanbul, Turkey. The platform will dock at the Filyos Port in the Black Sea and will stay for a 20 year mission and will provide double the natural gas intake of Turkey to 20 million cubic meters per day. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images) Pilot boats assist the Osman Gazi as it navigates the Bosphorus on its way to the Black Sea on May 29, 2025 in Istanbul, Turkey. The platform will dock at the Filyos Port in the Black Sea and will stay for a 20 year mission and will provide double the natural gas intake of Turkey to 20 million cubic meters per day. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Dr Niklas Höhne from the NewClimate Institute said the government could demonstrate leadership as COP31 president by building on its recent successes in increasing its renewable energy capacity and announcing targets and plans to phase out coal and gas ahead of the summit. 

According to CAT, Türkiye should phase out coal by 2040 and fossil gas by 2045 at the latest to align its power sector with global efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial times. 

Türkiye quiet on fossil fuel roadmap

Ümit Şahin, coordinator of climate change studies at the Istanbul Policy Center (IPM), said Türkiye’s strategy is to approach the fossil fuel debate exclusively from the “end-use point of view”. 

“I don’t expect any push from the Turkish presidency to the producer countries in terms of fossil fuel production,” he told reporters. 

Neither does Şahin believe the Turkish presidency will throw its political weight behind another big-ticket item for COP31: a new global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Brazil took on the responsibility to voluntarily draft this document outside of the formal negotiations as a way to break the deadlock at last year’s UN summit in Belém when governments clashed over whether to develop one. 

The outgoing COP30 presidency will deliver the roadmap in early November – but it will be up to Türkiye and Australia to guide countries towards a decision on how the blueprint will be taken forward, either inside or outside the negotiations.

Leadership needed

Australia’s Chris Bowen, COP31’s president of negotiations, promised to lobby producing countries to deliver a “meaningful step forward” on the fossil fuel transition in an interview with The Guardian earlier this year. But he has been quiet on the role Australia sees for the fossil fuel transition roadmap. 

Natalie Jones, senior policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said the COP31 co-presidents “must provide clear leadership” on this process. 

“This roadmap cannot be left in a dusty drawer,” she told journalists. “Rather, it must be translated into action, with all countries identifying what elements they can adopt or develop in their own national roadmap.”

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Like Türkiye, Australia has yet to produce a national blueprint for winding down coal, gas and oil. Rather than moving toward a phase-out, state and federal governments have kept expanding fossil fuel licensing over the past year, according to a new analysis published this month by Climate Analytics. 

Under existing policy, both coal and gas are on track to remain in Australia’s power system as late as 2050 – a trajectory the report defines as incompatible with the 1.5C limit the country says it’s committed to. 

No binding end dates for the Netherlands

Analysts are watching out for national transition roadmaps as a bellwether for governments that claim to be leaders in the global shift away from fossil fuels.

The climate and environment ministers of Colombia and the Netherlands, which are co-hosting the Santa Marta conference, embrace on the podium during the high-level segment in Santa Marta, Colombia, April 28, 2026 (Photo: Colombia Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development) The climate and environment ministers of Colombia and the Netherlands, which are co-hosting the Santa Marta conference, embrace on the podium during the high-level segment in Santa Marta, Colombia, April 28, 2026 (Photo: Colombia Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development)

The Netherlands, which co-hosted the first fossil fuel transition conference in Santa Marta this year, published its own domestic roadmap earlier this week. The document followed through on a pledge that “leadership on transitioning away from fossil fuels must be backed by concrete action, not just ambitious words”, said a spokesperson for Stientje van Veldhoven, the Dutch minister for climate policy.

But experts criticised the plan for failing to set a binding end date for the country’s fossil fuel production and use. While targeting a rapid increase in renewables capacity, the Dutch government only commits to phasing out oil, gas and coal “in the energy and feedstock system to eventually zero, and to minimise fossil use” by 2050. 

Yvo de Boer, a former Dutch diplomat and executive secretary of the UN climate body, said the Dutch roadmap falls short of what’s needed to give industry the confidence to deploy capital in support of the energy transition with greater predictability. 

“Ultimately, a roadmap without deadlines is nothing more than a footpath paved with good intentions,” he added, writing on LinkedIn. 

The post Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

Despite millions of dollars in grants and technical help for African businesses to power farming and other food production activities with renewable energy, most efforts remain stuck at the early stages because they struggle to find the investors, markets and expertise they need to grow.

This was the message from a coalition of global institutions working on energy, water and agriculture at this month’s Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda.

“Energy, agriculture, water and nutrition actors rarely design solutions together,” the Agri-Energy Coalition said in a Call to Action on powering food systems with clean energy.

Using more renewables – especially solar power – to drive food systems would reduce food losses, ensure year-round availability and affordability of healthy foods, and improve productivity, income and resilience among farmers, food processors and other small enterprises, the coalition added. 

In an interview with Climate Home News at the forum, Olamide Niyi-Afuye, CEO of the Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA) – a body representing private-sector developers of small-scale, off-grid electricity systems across the continent – said its members are starting to recognise this interdependence and are increasingly considering businesses that combine energy with agricultural activities.

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This, Niyi-Afuye added, could lead to greater supply and use of clean power for key processes like irrigation, food processing and storage, creating new sources of revenue for both sectors. 

CHN: Conversations at the Africa Food Systems Forum highlighted how organisations working in energy and agriculture often operate in silos. What has hampered their collaboration, and how has that affected Africa’s economic development?

A: Most mini-grid companies in Africa were primarily incentivised to achieve connections. If you look at some ongoing projects, you see a cost-per-connection model [of revenue]. When a subsidy is tied to achieving a connection, regardless of whether it is a productive connection, you might not notice the problem until five years down the line, when you realise the cash flows are not what you projected.

Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal

So now we’re in a “come-to-Jesus moment” as an industry, where we’re righting the wrongs and adjusting our business models to make sure companies do not go bust and there is some level of sustainability over the long term.

The saying is not wrong that we’ve been working in our own silos because we’ve focused on the smaller things instead of the helicopter view. There needs to be cross-pollination [between the energy and agriculture sectors] because, if we are thinking about industrialisation, energy is a key driver of industrialisation. We will not achieve that if we’re not in the room and part of those conversations.

CHN: Productive use of energy is intended to ensure electricity access goes beyond lighting homes to improving livelihoods, creating jobs and powering equipment. But what happens when farmers cannot afford the equipment they need to do that? How can energy, agriculture and equipment players work together to make the transition more accessible?

A: That’s why we’re having conversations with companies set up to de-risk the agriculture sector. By leveraging that connection, we’re able to aggregate potential energy needs and develop instruments that make equipment more affordable through bulk procurement.

We can have arrangements that make it easier for farmers and food producers to lease equipment and eventually own it over a period. There’s no real pressure to recover the capital very quickly because you’re looking at scale.

Rice farmer Danjuma Okuwa adjusts his newly installed electric rice milling machine at his compound in Rukubi, Nasarawa, Nigeria, September 27, 2022. (Thomson Reuters Foundation/Afolabi Sotunde) Rice farmer Danjuma Okuwa adjusts his newly installed electric rice milling machine at his compound in Rukubi, Nasarawa, Nigeria, September 27, 2022. (Thomson Reuters Foundation/Afolabi Sotunde)

There is a whole lot across the agricultural value chain that needs energy, from farming and harvesting to food processing and value-addition. We need to understand the energy needs across the value chain and bring our members in to provide solutions.

Developers do not necessarily need to provide every productive-use solution themselves. They can partner with equipment suppliers, financiers, agribusinesses and other service providers to enable customers to use electricity productively. The objective is simple: do not just electrify communities; enable economic activity that uses that electricity.

CHN: When Africa’s industrialisation is discussed, you hear things like renewables cannot provide enough baseload, while some food processors are sceptical about switching to renewable energy because of these concerns about reliability. What is your response?

A: It’s not a controversial statement to say that a typical baseload is usually from the grid, and it’s usually from multiple sources including renewable energy. For large-scale operations, we can look at blending multiple sources of energy. But how do we solve the problem of a mid-sized farmer? We can solve it with a mini-grid using renewable energy.

Comment: Every country needs a model to help optimise its energy transition

If you go to a small farmer in a rural area, they don’t care about what source of energy they’re getting. They just want something that can help them get from A to B. If you look at the direct energy needs of farmers and food processors, I’m sure 90 percent of their consumption can be solved by renewable energy. Let’s start with that problem first. Then, as they scale, they might need to ramp up, and we can start talking about a bigger baseload.

CHN: How much agricultural value is lost because farmers and food businesses lack reliable, affordable electricity?

A: If you look at, for example, the fact that we need to maybe plant tomatoes or strawberries in Jos before it gets to Lagos [Nigeria], which most likely is by road, I can assure you that a good chunk, if not stored properly, would be bad by then. So the fact that we do not have energy is in itself a lost opportunity to maximise the potential of the agriculture sector. So until we’ve solved the energy problem, we will not salvage waste – and for me that is a lost opportunity. 

CHN: AGRA, an institution focused on scaling agricultural innovations to help smallholder farmers, estimates a massive shortfall between current investments in the continent’s food systems and what is actually needed to build a resilient, profitable agricultural economy – to the tune of $180 billion per year. Can integrating energy into food systems help bridge that gap?

A: Yes – if energy can help unlock the potential to earn more money, investors will follow the money. Investments go where there is certainty, and until there is certainty around cash flow and revenue, investment will be limited.

My vision is to see more Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) being signed between energy players and the agriculture sector. We can start by getting people into the room, understanding their pain points, crafting a framework and documentation that works for both parties, and then seeing deals happen.

This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.

The post How clean energy can boost business for Africa’s food producers appeared first on Climate Home News.

The drought hits hardest peasant farmers practicing subsistence agriculture who were forced onto marginal lands after being stripped of their ancestral territories.

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Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio is a senior advisor on adaptation and resilience with the United Nations Foundation and Mattias Söderberg is global climate lead at Danish NGO DanChurchAid.

Recent extreme events – from wildfires and heatwaves in Europe to flash flooding following a glacier collapse in Nepal – have shocked and devastated communities, bringing years of warnings about such climate impacts to the doorstep of communities around the world.

One thing is certain: the new climate reality is here – and the adaptation strategies designed for yesterday’s world are no longer sufficient.

Attribution science has since shown that the hotter and more frequent heatwaves we’re experiencing around the world would have been virtually impossible without today’s high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate shocks are now so severe that they reverberate through supply chains, food and water systems, financial markets and the movement of people.

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They must be a catalyst for a new way of thinking about adaptation and resilience, and how we finance solutions that work. A failure to invest in adaptation in one region can create costs far beyond it, which is why the concept of shared resilience is critical for leaders to grasp.

Investment not charity

At the UN General Assembly (UNGA 81) this month, leaders have an opportunity to translate today’s urgency into concrete commitments on adaptation and loss and damage finance ahead of COP31.

Those commitments are needed to underpin global stability, shared prosperity and human security. Governments should use this moment to show what a new response looks like: finance that reaches communities faster, supports locally grounded solutions, strengthens national systems, and helps countries prepare before the next shock arrives.

If we want sustained economic growth, food and water security, and resilient and prosperous societies across every region, adaptation must be at the heart of today’s development and security agenda. It cannot be just a future planning consideration or a narrow issue for climate ministries. Adaptation is now everyone’s business – and it must be financed fast and fair.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly framed climate finance as an investment rather than charity, warning that “a world in climate chaos cannot be a world at peace” and describing human security as freedom from the chronic and sudden disruptions that climate change multiplies.

What’s more, adaptation delivers a real return-on-investment, with researchers estimating that every dollar invested produces $10 in benefits, saving lives, protecting livelihoods, and reducing the costs of future disasters.

Hitting adaptation limits

The urgency to scale adaptation systematically is growing. The newly released “Limiting Overshoot” report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) confirms what scientists have long warned: exceeding global warming of 1.5C is now unavoidable under current policies. Yet, how high temperatures rise – and how long the world remains above the 1.5C threshold – will determine whether communities, economies and entire ecosystems can keep pace.

There are limits to adaptation. When we breach those limits, lives and livelihoods are lost, and people and ecosystems suffer greatly. We cannot simply build yesterday’s infrastructure a little stronger and assume it will be enough.

Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say

We need to fundamentally change the systems that determine how societies anticipate, absorb and recover from both immediate and evolving non-linear climate shocks. This includes transforming physical systems, such as infrastructure, and the governance systems that affect where and how we live to how we maintain our health and wellbeing.

Finance today is nowhere near the scale of the challenge.

The UNEP “Adaptation Gap Report 2025” estimates the shortfall in adaptation finance in developing countries at $284 billion–$339 billion a year – roughly 12 to 14 times current international public flows of around $26 billion. That gap is a development, economic and human security problem, especially for the most vulnerable populations who have contributed the least to causing the climate crisis.

Building resilience into financial systems

There are already signs of what a more systemic adaptation response could look like. Communities around the world are delivering practical solutions at local level, even as adaptation finance remains notoriously, and appallingly, difficult to access. Cyclone-resistant homes, local forecasting capacities, drought-resistant crops, heat insurance for pregnant informal workers and mangrove restoration are rooted in local knowledge and lived experience, while delivering benefits far beyond the communities where they originate from.

But local innovation alone is not enough; the systems around it need to be resilient too.

Jamaica offers one example. The country has built a multi-layered disaster-risk financing framework, including a catastrophe bond and contingency funds, through sustained fiscal discipline and proactive investment. Its debt-to-GDP ratio fell from around 147% in 2012 to around 62% in 202-25. That groundwork matters when disaster strikes.

Hurricane Melissa’s destruction shows need for climate resilience push

Following Hurricane Melissa, Jamaica was able to secure billions of dollars in reconstruction financing from multilateral banks – finance that might otherwise have been much harder to access. The lesson is clear: resilience can be built into the financial architecture of a country before a crisis arrives. That is the shift we now need to make at scale.

The foundations already exist – in Kingston’s fiscal reforms, in early-warning systems from the Sahel to the Pacific, and in every community that adapted before disaster struck. What is still missing is the political will, and the finance, to take what works and put it to work everywhere, at the speed our world’s new climate reality demands.

To hear more on this issue from high-level officials and experts, sign up for this event during Climate Week NYC, at 8am EDT on September 24 (in person or online), moderated by Climate Home News Editor Megan Rowling: Adapting to the New Climate Reality: Why Accelerating Impacts Demand New Responses.

The post Human security relies on adapting to the world’s new climate reality appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rob Faure Walker's book highlights how Jungian ideas can help us navigate capitalism, ecological crisis and the search for collective repair, writes Craig Snelgrove

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New polling has revealed that 85% of regional Hunter residents have experienced an extreme weather event in the past five years, and 80% say these events are driving up their cost of living.

Lidy Nacpil is the coordinator of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).

Recent reporting on international climate negotiations has highlighted a sharpening divide within civil society and multilateral diplomacy. A troubling, simplistic narrative has taken root: that the UN climate process is witnessing a binary struggle between defenders of science and those attacking it.

This framing is not only inaccurate; it is dangerous. Characterising a substantive methodological and political debate in these terms misdiagnoses the stakes and stirs conflict instead of clarity.

No one disputes that climate action must rest on science. Science tells us what has led us to the climate crisis – the accumulation of historical emissions – and how much carbon budget remains if we are to keep temperature rise below 1.5C. It tells us how much global emissions must drop, and how fast. Science is also essential in assessing each country’s historical contribution to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Responsibility, however, must also be based on capacity. For those who generated the largest share of historical emissions, that capacity includes the enormous wealth and economic power accumulated through the same fossil-fuel-intensive development that generated those emissions.

As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond

While principles that should guide human action aren’t scientific questions – they are matters of values – applying them to real-world problems requires scientific grounding. Equity recognises the scientifically established reality of differentiated responsibilities among countries and within societies. Putting equity into practice demands scientific rigour.

Scrutiny of IPCC models

Today, critics are scrutinising the assumptions and frameworks behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), used to project future scenarios and map global mitigation pathways. These concerns centre squarely on equity and justice.

The economic, technological and policy assumptions used in IAM scenarios are normative choices rather than scientifically prescribed or neutral facts. These include choices about discount rates, economic growth, energy demand, technology costs, carbon prices, land availability and the regional location of mitigation. Many IAM scenarios reproduce existing global inequalities rather than transform them. Questions about transparency, representativeness and diversity in the scientific process are deeply urgent.

Most IAM scenarios are built primarily around global cost-effectiveness – directing emissions reductions to places where mitigation is modelled as cheapest rather than allocating effort according to historical responsibility, capacity and development needs.

The resulting pathways allow developed countries to retain disproportionately high levels of energy and fossil-fuel consumption while requiring developing countries to undertake substantial mitigation and carbon removal, including land-based measures that threaten food security and local development.

Northern models often assume uniform access to cheap financing. In reality, Global South economies face far higher capital costs, driving up the price tag of rapid infrastructure shifts. 

Constraints on development space

Scenario constraints also limit the development space poorer nations need without guaranteeing adequate climate finance. When models treat profoundly unequal starting points as uniform baselines, policy pathways lock in global inequality under the banner of scientific objectivity.

Pointing out these structural flaws isn’t rejecting science. It is essential scientific scrutiny aimed at producing stronger, fairer, and more actionable results.

Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks

The fight is not about whether we want to keep temperature rise below 1.5C, but about how we get there. A pathway can be technically compatible with 1.5C or 2C while still being deeply unequal in who gets to consume energy, who must reduce emissions, and whose development is constrained. Temperature compatibility alone does not make a pathway fair.

Critiquing IAM scenarios from an equity perspective is neither an attack on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor an attack on science. Rigorously examining IPCC reports – their substance, assumptions, and processes – is an acknowledgement of the IPCC’s importance and entirely consistent with scientific method.

Tensions over AR7 timing

There is a separate but related tension over the cycle and timeline of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7).  Some governments and civil society voices advocate completing its Working Group reports in time to feed directly into the UN’s Second Global Stocktake in 2028. 

The motivation makes sense: policymakers need timely science. But several developing-country negotiators and researchers have warned that meeting that deadline could severely disadvantage the Global South.

Funding gap threatens next round of IPCC climate science reports, chair warns

Global North authors and institutions remain disproportionately represented in the research underlying IAM assessments. Developing-country researchers often work with fewer institutional resources, smaller research budgets, and less administrative support. Accelerated publishing and assessment schedules can further limit their ability to generate, submit, and peer-review research in time for inclusion.

The AR7 timeline concerns boil down to inclusivity, representation, and equity. Requiring the IPCC to meet tight political calendars without ensuring meaningful support and participation for developing-country researchers risks reproducing the very inequalities being challenged.

Cooperation requires equity

Political interests are indeed at work in UNFCCC negotiations and must be surfaced. Bad-faith actors seek to evade fossil-fuel phase-outs or shirk climate-finance obligations. Many developed country parties are guilty of both, including those who style themselves as “Friends of Science.”

We must not lump legitimate scientific critiques raised by several Global South researchers and many civil society organisations concerning representation, economic assumptions and fair-share accounting together with obstructionism. Doing so risks misrepresenting and delegitimising critical scientific work and Global South equity and justice perspectives.

The climate movement is strongest when it aligns rigorous science with global equity and justice. Achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals requires robust science that fully integrates the experiences, economic realities and academic contributions of the Global South. Effective climate action also requires international cooperation, and without equity, such cooperation cannot be sustained. We do not have to choose between science and equity. We need both.

The post Framing the climate science debate as a binary battle isn’t just wrong – it’s dangerous appeared first on Climate Home News.

In Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service plans to let Pitkin County take over management of the Maroon Bells Scenic Area because it can no longer cover a $300,000 annual shortfall.

It plans to do this using a legal shortcut known as a categorical exclusion, which lets federal agencies skip the environmental review and public comment process required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for decisions the government has already determined won’t significantly affect the environment. According to the Center for Western Priorities’ Lilly Bock-Brownstein, this could set a dangerous precedent for public lands.

The specific exclusion the Forest Service intends to use was written for small permits like mountain bike passes and backcountry ski guiding, not full management of one of the West’s most popular and iconic recreation areas.

Other areas have received much more thorough review than is proposed for the Maroon Bells. In 2024, the Forest Service proposed handing management of Sweetwater Lake, an 832-acre site in the same national forest, to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. It prepared a full environmental impact statement—a review that’s still underway. Maroon Bells would get none of that scrutiny.

Pitkin County has the third-highest per capita income in the United States and a dedicated open-space tax through 2040—a best-case scenario for this kind of deal. But if the precedent is set for categorical exclusions to be used as a shortcut to transfer land management, the same could happen at any underfunded site, in counties with fewer resources and less commitment to conservation, which could lead to logging, mining, and drilling.

According to Bock-Brownstein, the solution for budget and staffing shortfalls should be to properly fund the Forest Service.

“The Maroon Bells belong to everyone, and the public has a right to be part of the decision about how it is managed,” she wrote.

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Quote of the day

We need to modernize a system developed for a different era to respond to climate change, invasive species, increasingly severe wildfire, accelerating habitat loss, and evolving public expectations.”

—Mark Salvo, senior conservation advisor at Oregon Natural Desert Association, Ground Shift

Picture This @nationalparkservice

Put a bird on it.

Alright, folks. Tackle today like a hungry magpie or or similar cleaner bird perched on the head of a large mammal: focused, determined, and apparently willing to eat whatever’s crawling around up there.

You could also channel your inner elk or bison. Stand tall. Chew thoughtfully. Stare off into the distance as if you’ve just remembered an important meeting. And then crush those goals so thoroughly you’ll be saying, “Elk yeah.” Which is not a phrase anyone has ever needed to say, but here we are.

Fun fact: large herbivores like elk and bison are often visited by “cleaner birds,” such as magpies, which pick parasites from their skin or hair. The elk gets groomed. The magpie gets dinner. Everyone’s a winner. Maybe not the parasite.

NPS Photos

 

(Featured image: Maroon Lake at Maroon Bells. Photo by John Fowler, Flickr)

The post Forest Service plan would cut the public out of Maroon Bells management decision appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Energy and Alternatives Thematic Group Members Zoé VanGelder, Rose Benedice Lawaetz, Alex Jensen, Franco Augusto, Vasna Ramasar, Raquel Castillo, Matthew Burke, Trimita Chakma, Rebeca Roysen, Manthan Shripad, Madhuresh Kumar (Coord.) and Carlos Tornel (Coord.)alternativesalternativesGTAalternativesalternativesalternativesvsalternativesalternativesalternativesGTAweaversendorsersalternatives

Learning and Education (TG) Members Anchors: Raquel, Xochitl Members: Mugdha, Franco, Ashish, Laura, Pallavi, Steven, Sujit, Melanie, Dan, Annabelle, Pooja, Luci, Virginia, Raquel, Deissy, Nariman, Chris Itzel, Shrishtee, Vasna, Mwanaah, Jesús Martín, Necibe, Jay, Mona, Madhulika, Ishaan, Wakamonji, Valentina, Fabienne, Halwest, Chaitali, Hannah, Shail, Manisha, Alice, Bea.alternativesalternatives

In 2025, a third of rivers worldwide had below-normal flows

Source

More than 300,000 solar panels and 120 battery containers are helping to power Africa’s largest copper mine with continuous clean energy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as miners turn to solar as an alternative to expensive diesel and energy imports.

The project at the Kamoa Copper mine in the south of the DRC, which became operational last month, is one of the largest solar and battery facilities generating baseload power on the continent.

The clean electricity is displacing millions of litres of polluting diesel and costs less than a fifth of the price of generator power per kilowatt hour, the mining company said.

The project is part of a massive solar deployment across the continent. Recent data from global energy think-tank Ember found record solar capacity of 17 GW will be installed in Africa this year – a 45% rise from 2025.

Installed by CrossBoundary Energy, a developer of distributed renewable energy systems, the solar-battery facility at the DRC mine is “proof of concept” that solar and battery systems can provide the reliable power at scale needed by remote industrial operations, Annebel Oosthuizen, managing director at Kamoa Copper, told Climate Home News in an interview.

“There’s always been this perception in the DRC that solar isn’t ideal because it is raining half of the year. But it’s perfectly ideal. We are seeing a lot of interest from other mines that are still depending on generators and power imports,” she said.

Mining drives solar and battery surge

Like Kamoa Copper, a growing number of miners in the DRC are looking to solar power to compensate for the country’s chronic energy deficit at a lower cost as global diesel prices hit record highs amid ongoing attacks on oil infrastructure in the Middle East.  

As a result, the mining sector has become a key driver of the country’s growing clean energy demand and one of the biggest importers of large-scale solar equipment.

Ember found the DRC is set to install a record 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels this year – a 544% increase compared to 2025 and the equivalent of adding more than 60% of the country’s entire 2023 grid capacity.

The deployment of combined solar and battery storage solutions to deliver stable energy supplies to mines has also caused battery imports to surge. In dollar terms, the DRC’s imports of batteries from China far exceeded that of solar in the year to June 2026, according to Ember.

A crippling power deficit

The DRC holds significant energy resources and some of the world’s largest reserves of the minerals required to manufacture clean energy technologies. It is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, which is needed to make batteries, and Africa’s top producer of copper – a metal sought after for its electrical conductivity which is pivotal to the world’s electrification efforts.

Yet just 22.5% of the DRC’s population had access to electricity in 2024 – one of the lowest rates in the world, according to the World Bank. And as mining expands and more of the minerals extracted are being processed in the country, unreliable power supply has become a major constraint for the sector, which contributed to more than a quarter of the country’s GDP in 2024, excluding oil and gas.

The country has enormous hydropower potential, with the hydroelectric potential of the Congo River estimated at around 100 GW. But only a fraction is being harnessed.

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Still, virtually all of the DRC’s grid-connected electricity is generated by hydropower by the state-owned utility, Société Nationale d’Électricité (SNEL).

The electricity then has to be transported more than 1,500 kilometres to reach the mining belt in the south – a challenge made more difficult by ageing grid infrastructure and limited transmission capability. SNEL did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is estimated that there’s around a 1 GW energy deficit for the DRC mining sector,” said Matt Tilleard, CEO of CrossBoundary Energy, which owns the solar and battery equipment at the Kamoa Copper mine and provides the power as a service.

“The interest in solar from the mining industry is not theoretical – it is already translating into large-scale solar and battery procurement for mining operations in the region,” he added.

Solar displaces gas, saves energy costs

The facility installed by CrossBoundary is part of a plan by Kamoa Copper to supply more of the electricity it needs with solar energy and batteries as its operations expand, a faster solution than relying on harder-to-build hydropower projects.

“Our processing capacity has increased drastically over the last couple of years. We’ve constructed the largest copper smelter in Africa and that is so power-intensive,” said managing director Oosthuizen.

A joint venture between Canadian firm Ivanhoe Mines, Chinese company Zijin Mining Group and the DRC government, the mine needs 235 megawatts (MW) of power, which is expected to nearly double to 450 MW in the next five years.

Kamoa Copper currently receives 100 MW from state utility SNEL – “and the rest we have to find a solution for”, said Oosthuizen.

Aerial view of a vast solar park and battery storage containers powering the Kamoa Copper mine in southern DRC (Photo: Kamoa Copper SA)

Another 30 MW solar and battery baseload facility is expected to come into operation this month, enabling around 25% of the mine’s power needs to be generated by solar energy. An additional 60 MW of continuous solar power will be added by the end of 2027, and the company is exploring options for more solar capacity and two hydropower projects.

The operational 30 MW of clean electricity provided by CrossBoundary Energy will power pumps that prevent 400 million litres of water from flooding the underground mine every day.

In August alone, the facility has reduced the mine’s diesel consumption by around four million litres, generating an estimated $11 million dollars in savings at current diesel prices, Oosthuizen said.

The mine still relies on generators to meet a 20-40 MW deficit and to power the trucks used in the mine, which Oosthuizen said would be difficult to electrify in the next five years because the technology isn’t yet ready to operate in the mine’s tough and wet conditions.

Avoiding a two-speed transition

To prevent a major imbalance between industrial players’ access to clean, reliable energy and the millions of Congolese who remain without power, the government requires private electricity producers to reserve at least 10% of their generated power for local communities living near rural production sites.  

Delivering this, combined with rural electrification, mini-grid development and national grid expansion, is critical to prevent a two-speed energy transition that leaves people behind, said Catherine Mukobo, head of ACERD, the Congolese Association for Renewable and Decentralised Energies.

“Without implementing these policies, the DRC could get in a situation where mines have access to abundant modern energy while a large part of the population remains without electricity,” she said.

The post DR Congo’s power-hungry mining sector drives record solar surge appeared first on Climate Home News.

"The National Land Agency, cannot become an institution that renders invisible the main subject of agrarian policy: the Colombian peasantry.", says FENSUAGRO

The post Colombia: FENSUAGRO demands respect for the Constitution and the rights of Colombia’s peasantry appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

In 2023, under the bright lights of the Expo City Dubai, almost 200 nations adopted an agreement to dramatically alter the world’s relationship with energy.

The deal at the COP28 climate summit promised to triple the amount of renewable electricity capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2% to 4%. Taken together, these two commitments have the potential to usher in a new global economy that is cleaner and smarter. 

Research suggests the world is on course to meet the renewable energy target, with an annual growth rate of nearly 30% between 2023 and 2025. The same cannot be said of energy efficiency, where growth fell to 1% in 2024, but has since climbed to 1.8%, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA attributes this poor performance to a number of factors: strong growth in industrial energy demand, policy gaps, greater access to inefficient air conditioners, and an overall growth in energy demand which renewables have not been able to meet. 

Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash) Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash)

Global electricity demand is predicted to grow by 3.8% in 2027, up from 3% in 2025. According to researchers, this demand is primarily being driven by heavy industries – steel, chemicals, cement – which overwhelmingly still use fossil fuels to power their energy-intensive factories. 

In addition, the explosive growth of AI has led to the development of new data centres which require huge amounts of electricity. Under conservative scenarios, data centres could double their electricity consumption by 2030, and those dedicated to servicing AI needs could see a 30% annual increase over the same period. The more these trends continue, the greater the cost of transitioning to cleaner, more efficient technologies.

Taking the right policy direction

While both old and new technologies put added pressure on the electricity system, the targets set in recent years remain the same. This presents policymakers with a challenge and an opportunity.

Policy is often designed to be responsive to the world around it. When the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive was first adopted in 2012, the world was a very different place. That is why it has since been updated, twice, in 2018 and 2023.

Is electrification a no-brainer in the race to net-zero?

Mario Giordano, global head of public and government affairs at lighting multinational Signify, calls this piece of legislation “market transformational” as it created “long-term certainty through binding targets, energy saving obligations, and renovation requirements”. This, in turn, allowed businesses to plan investments and start to innovate with the stability the directive created. 

The legislation has been credited with improving efficiency rates across the bloc. According to Eurostat, the EU used a record low amount of energy in 2024, 20% less than in 2006, an historic high point.

One of the next steps on that journey for Europe is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which seeks to upgrade old buildings and introduces a zero-emissions standard for new public ones.

“It is a huge opportunity to renovate the continent’s building stock, and lighting is everywhere,” said Giordano. “There will need to be a massive overhaul from conventional lighting to LEDs, targeting the worst-performing buildings,” he added. This bold legislative approach could provide a template for other countries to develop energy policies with maximum impact on efficiency rates.

How to get to 4%

Jérôme Bilodeau, energy efficiency programme manager at the IEA, told Climate Home News “the world is not currently on track” to meet the COP28 efficiency goal but agreed it was achievable with the right policies in place.

“Nine out of 10 countries have achieved a rate of improvement of 4% at least one year over the past decade,” he said.

“There are many examples of effective energy efficiency policies across the world, and governments are introducing new ones regularly,” he added, pointing out that countries representing 85% of global energy demand had announced hundreds of new or updated policies in 2025 alone.

Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now”

In addition, the global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has turbocharged the policy environment with a suite of new policies from dozens of countries now in place to reduce energy demand.

The IEA recommends closing policy gaps and raising the ambition of existing ones to help achieve the 4% energy efficiency improvement target. These policy gaps can be quite straightforward to address – for example, creating efficiency standards for new buildings, something the IEA says is lacking in almost half of all countries. And as technologies improve, policies need to be updated.

“In some countries, a building that meets the local efficiency standard may in fact be using three times as much energy as one in another country with a similar climate but with higher efficiency standards,” Bilodeau added. 

One integrated system

Giordano argues that a whole system view is needed: “Across different industries, there is a growing consensus that energy efficiency, electrification and renewable energy are not separate policy tracks, but one integrated system,” he said.

He believes that lighting can make a serious contribution to this system as a scalable and cost-effective efficiency measure. As lighting is a mature technology that is installed almost everywhere, from small buildings to city streets, it can be upgraded faster and provide immediate savings.

“You can reduce emissions, free up electricity for electrification purposes, and also save money that can be invested elsewhere,” he added.

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The latest figures show lighting accounts for around 8% of global electricity demand, and Signify estimates that switching to efficient LED technologies could save enough electricity to power up to 300 million heat pumps, or 400 million electric vehicles worldwide.

The focus on lighting would form part of a wider policy push to upgrade each country’s energy system where efficient appliances and processes are powered by renewables. And using energy more intelligently and flexibly, for example, by incentivising demand when renewable generation is higher, will greatly improve efficiency rates.

The English city of Liverpool is an example of one place seeking to use electricity in this way. A recent project, completed in 2026, saw the installation of ‘traffic adaptive lighting’ on key routes between a new football stadium and the city centre. The council can now respond to real-time fluctuations in demand, such as increased usage on match days, to meet people’s needs. This new approach could offer up to 30% in cost savings over the next decade, according to Signify.

Making energy work harder

An oft-repeated phrase in energy circles is that the greenest electron is the one you don’t use. The world is making steady progress on the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels. New wind and solar power installations continue to grow at record rates, with widespread coverage across continents. But in the headlong rush to build out capacity, governments and business may at the same time be taking a step backwards by paying insufficient attention to energy efficiency.

The positive work in renewables could easily be undone without a coordinated effort to make energy go further and work harder than it currently does. Experts in these circles agree that stronger, targeted policies are an important first step to achieving the world’s energy efficiency goals. But time is quickly running out to do so.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post The overlooked shortcut to meeting the world’s energy goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

There is very little authorities in Nepal could have done to prevent the deaths and devastation caused by the flash flood on its border with Tibet in late August, scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group have said.

Launching a study that highlighted the role of climate change in causing the glacial rock and ice collapse that triggered the Himalayan flood, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto told reporters that “no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction”.

The findings released on Thursday are likely to strengthen Nepal’s case for emergency support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its board members met informally on Wednesday to discuss whether to grant the country a maximum of $20 million towards its estimated $4.8 billion cost of recovery and reconstruction, but no decision has yet been taken.

Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Climate Home News last week that the destructive flood was “exactly the kind of climate-driven catastrophe the Fund was created to address”.

Hard to predict

The WWA study found that rock-ice avalanches are very hard to predict and that moving people out of areas vulnerable to such floods is difficult as their livelihoods revolve around the rivers along which the floods travel.

The recent disaster began on the morning of August 26, when an avalanche started falling beneath a glacier. This caused huge amounts of rocks and glacier ice to fall over a kilometre to a valley floor, where they then picked up more rock and ice and became a flood of debris heading downhill and downstream along the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The torrent entered the narrow Lhende Khola gorge and crashed through the busy Gyirong port border crossing at 170 kilometres an hour. It continued many kilometres downstream before eventually turning from rock and ice to water and slowing down.

The flood swept through villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, killing over 1,300 people in Nepal with more than 5,000 still missing. The flood also killed at least 40 people in Chinese-run Tibet.

Those on higher ground away from the river mainly survived but the flood’s speed meant that many people received no warning to seek higher ground or shelter.

While Nepal has early warning systems for flooding caused by rain and glacial lake outbursts, the WWA study noted that rock-ice avalanches are complex and understudied, with methods to monitor them still being explored.

Co-author Walter Immerzeel, mountain hydrology professor at Utrecht University, told journalists that with current methods, the disaster could not have been predicted.

But, he said, in the future it may be possible to use remote sensing techniques to analyse glaciers and rocks to generate a warning before a collapse occurs.

A technique called radar interferometry can detect hotspots which should be monitored with field-based sensors and drones, he said, adding that early warning systems could be installed in these areas using seismometers, water-level measurements and CCTV.

Because doing this for thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas would be difficult, authorities could monitor only the rock and ice faces that are a danger to the river valleys with the most people and infrastructure in them, he added. But this would still require lots of investment together with international collaboration and coordination, he warned.

The study found that another potential adaptation strategy – restricting development in flood-prone river valleys – is socially, economically and politically difficult.

The scientists said habitable land is scarce in these steep river valleys and economic activities like transport and hydropower generation are dependent on the river itself.

Madhab Uprety, a Nepali scientist from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that, while new development should assess the risks of floods, many existing communities and buildings are already at risk.

Loss and damage

Otto said the flood should be discussed in the context of loss and damage as “there is no doubt that climate change is one of the drivers” and “it’s also one of the types of events that are absolutely outside of the limits we can possibly adapt to”.

As well as the deaths, a Nepali government’s assessment has found that a large amount of infrastructure was damaged, including more than 7,500 homes, 105 bridges, 48 public buildings, 47 cultural heritage assets, 18 schools, 13 hydropower facilities, seven health facilities, and numerous shops, hotels, restaurants, irrigation systems and farms. Over 30,000 people were affected.

Developing countries have called for the loss and damage fund’s board to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to Nepal’s request for funding. Instead of a full board meeting though, board members met only informally and online on Wednesday, Climate Home News understands. A source with knowledge of discussions said the informal nature of the meeting meant they were not able to take decisions or agree on next steps, which have been left up to the board’s co-chairs.

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Speaking before that meeting started, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal said he had “heard of an extremely positive response” to Nepal’s request from board members. “Hopefully there will be something – a decision that the fund will do for exactly the reason that the fund was established,” he said.

Ajay Mathur, former Indian climate negotiator and now head of The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told a separate press briefing on Wednesday that the Nepal flood disaster would push loss and damage higher up the agenda of international climate talks, particularly if the United Nations Secretary-General decides to champion the cause at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Murat Kurum, Turkish environment minister and president-designate of COP31, told Climate Home News last week that he would be “pleased” if the fund could support Nepal and that he will keep calling in every speech for countries to give money to the loss and damage fund.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy and now a senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called for the loss and damage fund – which currently has around $630 million in contributions – to be topped up with new pledges from governments as well as solidarity levies on things like luxury air travel, super-rich individuals and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits.

The post Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu

• Flatlining fossils
• Clean-energy growth matches power demand
• Which states led the clean-power shift?
• Fall in oil and gas consumption continues
• Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues
• New investments in coal 
• Outlook for India’s emissions
• About the data

A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.

This guest post is by:

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) 

Anubha Aggarwal, India analyst at CREA

This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall.

At the same time, both oil and gas consumption have fallen across the nation for two years in a row, helping alleviate the shock of the Hormuz crisis.

Nevertheless, the new six-monthly analysis for Carbon Brief shows that India’s emissions grew by 3.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, due to increases from steel, cement and other sectors.

Other key findings for the first half of 2026 include:

• India’s power-sector emissions flatlined at 2024 levels, after a 2.2% decline in the first half of 2025 and a 2.3% rise in the same period this year.
• Clean energy met all of the 7% rise in India’s electricity demand over the two years, adding 63 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to the total demand of Switzerland.
• India has added 77 gigawatts (GW) of solar in this two-year period, helping meet 60% of the rise in electricity demand overall.
• While fossil-fuel generation stagnated, generators added 8.5GW of new coal capacity, leading to fewer running hours and increased costs to electricity consumers.
• CO2 emissions from oil and gas fell by 7% year-on-year, extending a reduction that began in 2025, despite higher demand for road transport fuels.
• Steel and cement emissions grew by 8% year-on-year, reaching a 23% share of India’s total CO2 in the first half of 2026. 

If the pace of India’s clean-energy expansion is to continue, it will need to upgrade its electricity grid, rapidly build out energy storage and boost the flexibility of coal power.

While clean-energy expansion is covering most or all of India’s power-demand growth, the fossil-fuel industry continues to pursue major capital investments.

This includes large amounts of new coal-power capacity, ambitious plans for the conversion of coal-to-chemicals and efforts to boost domestic coking coal production for the steel sector.

While CO2 output from the power sector is flat, with oil and gas in decline, India’s emissions still went up due to the contribution from industry.

India lags behind its competitors – including most large emerging economies – when it comes to electrifying its industrial sector.

Faster progress would enable clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in industry, as well as for power, offering the potential for India to cut its emissions overall.

Flatlining fossils

Last year, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest pace in two decades, according to previous analysis for Carbon Brief.

This sharp slowdown was due to rapid clean-energy growth and flat oil demand, combined with rising emissions from steel and cement.

The first half of 2026 marks a continuation of these trends.

Most strikingly, the ongoing surge in clean-energy generation means that emissions have flatlined in India’s power sector for two years, as shown in the figure below.

Power-sector CO2 was the same in the first half of 2026 as two years earlier, with a small decline in 2025 having been reversed over the same period this year.

For further details, see: About the data.

Beyond electricity generation, India’s key emitting sectors continued to see divergent trends in the first half of 2026, as some saw ongoing decline while others reached new heights.

This is shown in the figure below, which compares year-on-year changes in emissions during the first half of 2026 with the same periods in 2025, 2024 and the average for 2021-23.

Specifically, emissions grew by 2.3% in the power sector, reversing last year’s decline, while demand for gas and oil products fell for another year.

The biggest increases were for steel and cement, where emissions growth accelerated to 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, well above the recent trend.

For further details, see: About the data. Clean-energy growth matches power demand

The period from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026 saw the largest increase in non-fossil power generation on record in India.

This enabled fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from the sector to stay flat, even as electricity consumption increased.

Indeed, this is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall, as shown below.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over this two-year period, India’s total power generation increased by 7%, some 63TWh, equal to the total consumption of Singapore or Switzerland.

The additional power requirement of 63TWh was met entirely by clean energy. Solar grew by 44TWh, alongside growth from wind (13TWh), nuclear (7TWh) and hydro (8TWh).

Together, clean-energy sources added 70TWh over two years, more than the net increase in demand.

(For comparison, China’s nuclear, wind and solar output increased by 485TWh in 2025.)

The figure below shows that new investments are more than sufficient to maintain this trend, as added power generation from new clean power capacity has stayed above average demand growth for the past 18 months.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over the past two years, India added 77GW of new solar capacity, 11GW of wind, 5GW of hydro and 0.6GW of nuclear capacity.

Solar power continues to dominate clean-energy growth, but, collectively, the other non-fossil sources still contributed 40% of the overall increase in generation. 

One factor in electricity demand growth in 2026 is the El Niño, which delayed the monsoon and intensified heatwaves, driving up cooling demand.  

India is accelerating investment in energy storage, which will support further growth in clean power. The National Electricity Plan projected a requirement of 82 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity by 2026-27 and 411GWh by 2031-32.

As of May 2026, the government has issued tenders for around 272GWh of energy storage capacity, including 142GWh of pumped hydro and 133GWh of battery storage systems. Current capacity is 7.5GWh of battery storage and around 60GWh of pumped hydro.

Which states led the clean-power shift?

The fall in power generation from fossil fuels from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026 was concentrated in a few states.

Gujarat saw both the largest reduction in fossil-fuel generation and the largest expansion in clean power, as shown in the figure below.

For further details, see: About the data.

After Gujarat, the largest increases in clean-power generation were seen in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, which also saw reductions in power generation from fossil fuels.

Several other states saw declines in fossil-fuel generation due to higher net imports, rather than local clean power. These included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab. 

Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also succeeded in increasing clean-power generation faster than power demand, thereby contributing to keeping fossil fuel-based power generation stable nationwide across the two-year period. However, they exported much of the increase and consequently saw local increases in power generation from fossil fuels.

The two states with the largest increases in power demand, Maharashtra and Telangana, managed to almost match the rise with growth in clean-power generation.

Fall in oil and gas consumption continues

India’s oil consumption continued to fall during the first half of 2026, dropping 1.3% year-on-year, a slight acceleration from the 0.7% reduction in the same period last year.

While diesel and petrol consumption continued to grow, oil consumption was pulled down overall by declines in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke (a solid derivative of oil used in the cement industry) and industrial feedstocks. Growth of aviation fuel use eased.

Diesel consumption growth accelerated from 1.8% to 4.1% in the first half of the year, supported by higher freight movement and increased agricultural demand, as the delayed monsoon led to greater use of diesel-powered irrigation.

Petrol consumption returned to growth, increasing 6.9% year-on-year after zero growth in the same period in 2025, reflecting sustained growth in passenger and two-wheeler mobility.

A significant increase in ethanol blending shaved a full percentage point off the growth of petrol consumption. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target five years ahead of schedule in 2025-26. (Ethanol blending has faced public opposition.)

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India is also gaining momentum, with EVs adopted in a widening range of categories.

In Delhi, an EV policy was launched to accelerate electrification of the vehicle fleet, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, three-wheelers (auto rickshaws), commercial vehicles and high-mileage segments, alongside expanded charging infrastructure. Higher EV adoption rates will moderate the growth in emissions from petrol consumption in India. 

In contrast, aviation fuel demand growth slowed down from 5% to 2%. The slowdown coincided with the strait of Hormuz and wider crisis, which disrupted international aviation through temporary airspace closures and flight cancellations to several Middle Eastern destinations. Elevated aviation fuel prices also increased airline operating costs, contributing to lower fuel demand. 

LPG consumption contracted by 7%, after 5.7% growth in the same period last year, amid disruptions in global LPG markets following the Hormuz crisis.

Petcoke consumption fell 9.9%, more than reversing a 9.3% increase in the same period last year. Rising petcoke prices encouraged cement manufacturers to switch to coal.

Consumption of other petroleum products continued to drop, although the pace of decline moderated from 14% in 2025 to 9% in 2026. 

Industrial feedstock use was affected by shortages and price increases.

Naphtha demand contracted as import prices nearly doubled and domestic prices increased by around 60%, prompting petrochemical manufacturers to reduce operating rates and suppress demand for imported naphtha.

Bitumen consumption remained subdued due to slower road construction, driven by persistent land acquisition challenges and higher bitumen costs.

Meanwhile, higher light diesel oil (LDO) prices and shortage of LPG led some industrial consumers to switch back to furnace oil in boilers and heaters, despite the higher air pollutant emissions. Supply of fuel oil to industry increased for the same reason.

Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues

Steel and cement output in India grew by 8% and 9%, respectively, year-on-year in the first half of 2026, despite rising input prices and weakening profitability.

The growth in steel and cement was supported in part by increased investment in India’s real estate sector, especially in the second quarter. Steel consumption growth outpaced production, implying that inventories built up last year were tapped.

Despite domestic demand growth, profit margins of Indian steel and cement manufacturers remained under pressure for much of the period due to elevated raw material costs – particularly imported coking coal – and higher freight costs stemming from the Hormuz crisis.  

The pressure on prices could dampen growth. Cement prices are expected to rise to levels last seen in the 2021-22 financial year, when Russia’s decision to cut back gas exports to Europe drove a sharp increase in fossil-fuel prices.

Outside the steel, cement and power sectors, coal-consumption growth accelerated to 14% in the first half of 2026, up from 3% last year, as the LPG shortage prompted a shift to coal.

Gas shortages resulted in some additional burning of coal for cooking in March and April. The government officially authorised the hospitality industry to use coal, refuse-derived fuel pellets, biomass and kerosene for one month.

The ceramic and tile industry also requested that the government allow the use of coal gasifiers amid the gas shortage. State governments including Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra also allowed industries to temporarily use alternative fuels, including coal. 

India’s industrial energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal. Indian industry has the second-lowest electrification rate in the G20, as shown in the figure below. The share of electricity in total energy consumption in the sector also lags the world average, in terms of both current levels and the rate of increase.

For further details, see: About the data.

The current low rates of electricity use in Indian industry imply that there is major potential for electrification, using technologies and processes already in place in other countries.

New investments in coal 

While the clean-power expansion is starting to meet most or all of India’s electricity demand growth, there are still large investment plans across the coal supply chain.

Some 43GW of coal-power capacity was under construction at the end of June. Additional coal-power capacity is seen as necessary to meet increasing peak loads, even as solar power and energy storage are already playing a role in covering daytime and evening peak demand, respectively. The expansion of energy storage will increase this contribution.

Outside the power sector, India has major ambitions to produce chemical-industry products, such as fertiliser and plastic feedstock, from coal through coal gasification, in pursuit of energy security.

The government is targeting a capacity to process 100m tonnes of coal per year in the next four years, despite the technology for coal gasification still being nascent in India. At present, the only operational use of coal gasification is at Jindal Steel Limited, which is reportedly using syngas in its steel-making process. 

Meanwhile, India plans to reduce its average CO2 emissions per tonne of steel by 25% by 2025-26, mainly by reducing the share of coal-based steelmaking.

At the same time, the government is aiming to increase the use of domestic coking coal, which it notified in January this year as a “critical and strategic mineral”. Coal miners and steel companies are reportedly planning to establish additional washeries for coking coal to make it suitable for blending with imported coal for use in steel production. 

India is also looking to invest in new coal mines in the near future. 

These continued investments in coal gasification, domestic coking coal and new coal mining capacity could lock in coal use across industry for several decades.  

Outlook for India’s emissions

Over the two-year period from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026, India has achieved its largest clean-energy expansion on record.

As a result, power-demand growth has been met entirely by clean electricity and CO2 emissions in the sector have flatlined.

This expansion of clean energy also allowed a reduction in fossil-fuel imports for power generation, with the use of imported coal falling 38% and the use of gas by 35%, supporting the energy security aims of the government and reducing exposure to the Hormuz shock.

In order to keep the clean-energy growth going, India would need to overcome multiple obstacles, including expansion of the electricity transmission network, improvements in grid flexibility to accommodate variable renewables and the timely completion of new projects. 

For example, renewable power projects totalling 5.3GW missed completion deadlines and are having to pay penalties to the grid operator in order to retain network access.

Curtailment has emerged as an issue, particularly for projects relying on interstate power transmission, pointing to the need to upgrade the network. (Curtailment refers to electricity generation that is “wasted” because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.)

Another obstacle to be overcome if clean energy is to keep growing will be making coal-power plants more flexible, so they can ramp down during high renewable output.

A flexibility plan for coal-power plants has been delayed by more than a year due to persistent regulatory bottlenecks, contributing to the curtailment of renewable energy. 

Expanding energy storage has the potential to ease grid and flexibility constraints, while reducing or eliminating the need for adding thermal-power capacity to meet peak loads.

The Central Electricity Authority has proposed that, after June 2027, all new government-owned solar and wind projects would have “mandatory” two-hour battery storage. (This mirrors a policy that was in place in China until early 2025 and was subsequently scrapped, in favour of more market-based approaches.)

For oil and gas, India’s consumption has been flatlining for the past two years, after half a century of continuous growth that was only briefly interrupted by Covid-19.

This has reduced the impacts of the Hormuz crisis on the country’s trade balance, helping close the gap between supply and consumption. But it has entailed disruptive shifts in many oil-dependent sectors.

For example, high prices and fuel shortages due to the Hormuz crisis led state governments to reverse their orders banning the use of dirtier fuels such as fuel oil, kerosene and coal in industries and commercial establishments.

Meanwhile, EV adoption has also begun to influence oil consumption. 

Despite the progress in the power sector and reductions in oil consumption, India’s total emissions went up over the past two years due to a major increase in industrial emissions.

Low levels of electricity use in industry mean that growing industrial output results in increasing direct fossil-fuel use and emissions.

Unless the rate of industrial electrification picks up, increases in heavy industry output will continue to translate into increases in fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

About the data

This analysis is based on official monthly data for fuel consumption, industrial production and power generation from different ministries and government institutes. 

Coal-power emissions are estimated by combining plant-level coal consumption from the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly coal reports with data on the calorific value and emission factors of coal used at different power plants from the CEA’s CO2 baseline database.

For each station and month, total coal consumption is split into domestic and imported coal using the imported share of coal receipts over a trailing two-month window, found to best reproduce the actual split in data available for 2023.

Consumption is converted to CO2 using each plant’s station-specific gross calorific value from the CEA database and IPCC emission factors for domestic coal, imported coal and lignite. The national-average calorific value is used for recently added plants, for which data is not available in the baseline database. 

Coal use at steel and cement plants, as well as process emissions from cement production, are estimated using production indices from the index of eight core industries released monthly by the Office of Economic Adviser, assuming that changes in total fossil-fuel use follow production volumes. These production indices were used to scale fuel use by the sectors in 2022.

To form a basis for using the indices, monthly coal-consumption data for 2022 was constructed for the sectors by combining the annual total coal and petcoke consumption reported in IEA World Energy Balances with monthly production data. This work was set out in a paper by Robbie Andrew, a researcher at Norwegian research institute CICERO, on monthly CO2 emission accounting for India. Monthly petcoke consumption was available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, while coal consumption by the cement industry was calculated by subtracting petcoke use from total fossil-fuel use.

Annual cement-process emissions up to 2025 were also taken from Andrew’s work and scaled using the production indices. This approach better approximated changes in energy use and emissions reported in the IEA World Energy Balances, than did the amounts of coal reported to have been dispatched to the sectors, showing that production volumes are the dominant driver of short-term changes in emissions.

For other sectors – including aluminium, auto, chemical and petrochemical, paper and plywood, pharmaceutical, graphite electrode, sugar, textile, mining, traders and others – coal consumption is estimated based on data on despatch of domestic and imported coal to end users from statistical reports and monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal, as consumption data is not available.

Coal consumption by “captive” coal-power plants – those supplying power to industrial sites, not to the public electricity network – was calculated based on capacity changes from Global Energy Monitor, assuming constant utilisation, as utilisation has been very stable year-to-year, as calculated from Central Electricity Authority data.

The difference between coal consumption and dispatch is stock changes, which are estimated by assuming that the changes in the amount of coal stored at end-user facilities mirror those at coal mines, with end-user inventories excluding power, steel and cement assumed to be 70% of those at coal mines, based on comparisons between our data and the IEA World Energy Balances.

Stock changes at mines are estimated as the difference between production at and dispatch from coal mines, as reported by the Ministry of Coal.

Coal consumption is estimated in two ways for sectors beyond power, steel and cement. Consumption of domestic coal in these other sectors is taken from the monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal. Their consumption of imported coal is estimated from the total imports of thermal coal reported by consultancy Kpler, by subtracting demand for imports at coal-power plants. The basis for this assumption is that steel and cement industries use little imported thermal coal, according to Ministry of Coal data.

Product-by-product consumption data for petroleum products, as well as gas use by sector, is from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

As the fuel dispatch and consumption data is reported as physical volumes – such as tonnes or litres – calorific values are taken from IEA’s World Energy Balance and CO2 emission factors from 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

The emissions factor for motor oil or petrol was updated, based on the blending percentage of ethanol each year. The ethanol-blending percentage is as reported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. 

Calorific values are assigned separately to different fuel types, including domestic and imported coal, anthracite and coke, as well as to petrol, diesel and several other oil products.

related Explainer: The CMIP7 emissions scenarios – and how they explore future climate change 01.09.2026 Climate modelling UNEP: New country climate plans ‘barely move needle’ on expected warming 04.11.2025 Climate pollutants Analysis: India’s power-sector CO2 falls for only second time in half a century 18.09.2025 Emissions World’s electricity supply close to ‘peak emissions’ due to growth of wind and solar 05.10.2023 Electricity

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A legal shortcut, rewritten last year, is about to decide who runs one of Colorado’s most visited landscapes

Update: On Friday, September 18, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it will conduct a 15-day comment period before signing off on a special use permit for Pitkin County to manage operations at the Maroon Bells Scenic Area. The Forest Service has not yet released a map or an acreage number for what the permit would cover.

The Maroon Bells Scenic Area draws more than 200,000 visitors a year and is the gateway to the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, one of Colorado’s original wilderness areas. In May of this year, Pitkin County applied for a special use permit to take over day-to-day management of Maroon Bells, starting with the 2027 season. The White River National Forest says it can no longer cover a roughly $300,000 annual shortfall at the site and has told the county to finalize an agreement by fall or it will turn to a private concessionaire instead.

To authorize the management change, the U.S. Forest Service plans to use a categorical exclusion: a legal shortcut that lets federal agencies skip the environmental review and public comment process required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on decisions the government has already determined won’t significantly affect the environment. The rules governing that shortcut were rewritten last year to remove the public notice step that it previously included, meaning this management change could occur with no opportunity for public input.

Pitkin County has partnered with the Forest Service at the Maroon Bells for decades, and it’s stepping in because the federal government says it can no longer afford to manage the site at a $300,000 loss. The county, which is home to Aspen, undoubtedly has the knowledge, ability, and resources to manage the area responsibly for recreation and conservation, but the process still deserves scrutiny. The use of a categorical exclusion to bypass the NEPA process means the federal government is handing off management of a major recreation area to a local entity without thoroughly examining the potential environmental and social impacts and without providing the public that owns the land with a chance to share their concerns about the plan.

What even is a categorical exclusion? As outlined in NEPA, categorical exclusions can be used for categories of activities when the government has determined that there would be “no significant impact” to the environment from the proposed activity covered by the categorical exclusion. Agencies can also adopt each other’s categorical exclusions. Previous administrations from both political parties have used both of these approaches for a variety of purposes.

But the second Trump administration is broadening the use of categorical exclusions, in many cases trying to use them as blanket exemptions from following the law at all, or greatly expanding the acreage to which they apply. To lay the groundwork for this approach, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) repealed its implementing regulations for NEPA via a rule that was finalized in January 2026. Among other things, this repeal included removing the 30-day public comment period for proposed categorical exclusions. Essentially, the public will have to take the government at its word that the activities covered by the proposed categorical exclusion will have no significant impact on the environment and will have no opportunity to raise concerns or offer evidence that the activity would, in fact, have an impact on the environment.

In April 2026, following the rule repeal, CEQ issued new guidance on the use of categorical exclusions, framing its approach as “CE-first” and promoting categorical exclusions as “a core feature of NEPA” rather than a process to create defined and limited exceptions. CEQ chair Katherine Scarlett described the guidance as intended to “help agencies identify an off-ramp from unnecessary levels of environmental review” during the permitting process.

Following these policy changes, the Trump administration has wasted no time putting it into practice. For example, in August, the Bureau of Land Management finalized an exclusion for forest and woodland density management that raised the area covered from 70 acres to 5,000.

The exclusion the Forest Service intends to use at the Maroon Bells, USDA-29c-USFS, covers the “issuance of a new authorization or amendment of an existing authorization for recreation special uses that occur on existing roads or trails, in existing facilities, in existing recreation sites, or in areas where such activities are allowed.” The examples written into the rule are all small permits or contracts, including mountain bike permits on trails already open to bikes, backcountry ski guiding, a one-time event at an existing facility, and a concession contract to run a campground that was already operating. None of the examples include full management of one of the West’s most popular and iconic recreation areas.

Shuttle to Maroon Bells Trailhead, Tony Webster

Until last year, the Forest Service’s NEPA procedures put two checks on that shortcut: The agency had to notify the public before deciding an exclusion applied; scoping, its regulations said, “is required for all Forest Service proposed actions, including those that would appear to be categorically excluded.” And before using an exclusion, officials had to weigh a list of resource conditions that specifically named congressionally designated wilderness. In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA, the agency that houses the U.S. Forest Service) removed those procedures entirely, folding what survived into a single department-wide rule finalized this April. Whether a sensitive resource is enough to disqualify a project from the shortcut is now left to the responsible official’s sole discretion on a case-by-case basis.

Why this is wrong for Maroon Bells

The Maroon Bells agreement is wider-reaching than the permits that the categorical exclusion option was written for. The county’s ordinance authorizing the agreement says the Forest Service “has proposed issuing a Special Use Permit to authorize Pitkin County to assume responsibility for day-to-day operations, maintenance, visitor staffing, and natural resource stewardship at the Maroon Bells Scenic Area, while the federal government retains ultimate ownership and overarching regulatory oversight of the land.” The draft permit does not include an acreage number.

A concession contract to run a campground covers one campground, but this agreement covers operations, staffing, and resource stewardship seemingly across the entire scenic area. Professor Mark Squillace, who teaches natural resources law at the University of Colorado, made the same point in comments to the county and the Forest Service, saying that the exclusion “does not allow the wholesale transfer of management responsibility over the entire Maroon Bells Scenic Area.”

In 2024, the Forest Service proposed handing management of Sweetwater Lake, an 832-acre recreation area also within White River National Forest, to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. But for that transfer, the Forest Service announced it would prepare a full environmental impact statement, the most thorough review NEPA provides, and it ran a formal scoping process with public meetings and a comment period. That review is still underway. Sweetwater Lake received the most rigorous analysis available, while Maroon Bells would receive none.

Hiking above Sweetwater Lake, Matt Tomlinson

The risk of this approach may land back on Pitkin County. The Forest Service is not required to produce any NEPA documentation for this category, so there will be no federal record explaining the decision. If the permit and lack of environmental review are challenged, the county’s operating plan, reservation system, and new fee structure would sit in limbo while challenges play out in court.

Pitkin County’s commissioners and Open Space department have been careful stewards and clearly want what is best for the Maroon Bells. But a public process protects everyone’s stake in the site regardless of who holds office in the county. And the implications for this type of shortcut carry far beyond one county.

Beyond Pitkin County

The entire reason for this management change is money. Years of budget and staffing shortfalls have left the Forest Service unable to keep up the restrooms, trails, campgrounds, and visitor services at the site. The remedy for this issue should be to properly fund the Forest Service. National public lands belong to all Americans, and it should not be up to local governments to decide how they operate and who can visit them, as CWP noted in a previous blog post about this issue.

Pitkin County has the third-highest per capita income in the United States and an open space program funded by a dedicated property tax through 2040. It is close to a best-case scenario for this kind of arrangement with the federal government. But the precedent it sets will not be limited to counties with the resources and political will to properly manage areas like Maroon Bells. If a categorical exclusion can alter the management of a landscape this prominent with no public process, the same shortcut is available at any underfunded site, in counties with fewer resources, less capacity to run an operation at this scale, and less commitment to managing it for recreation and conservation. If the first question for managing public lands is “does it turn a profit?” then counties may quickly turn to logging, mining, and drilling rather than responsible stewardship.

West Maroon Creek, Steven dosRemedios

The Forest Service should complete an environmental analysis and open a public comment period before any permit is signed. Waiting for an environmental review is a smaller price than years of legal uncertainty at the Maroon Bells, and the next underfunded Forest Service site may not have a wealthy county willing to step up and take care of it.

The Maroon Bells belong to everyone, and the public has a right to be part of the decision about how it is managed.

The post Forest Service plan would cut the public out of Maroon Bells management decision appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Last night, over 125 people rallied outside Berkeley City Council in support of a resolution opposing coal handling, storage, and transport in the Bay Area while dozens of No Coal advocates made their support known to the City Council with signs and comments.

The Berkeley City Council passed the resolution unanimously.

The resolution is a response to the deadly Trump-funded coal terminal planned in West Oakland. The resolution also calls for the Bay Area Air District to strictly regulate coal facilities, and affirms the City’s support of Assembly Bill 40, which requires environmental review for large coal projects. The resolution was sponsored by Council members Igor Tregub (Author), Rashi Kesarwani (Co-sponsor), and Terry Taplin (Co-sponsor) as well as by Berkeley mayor Adena Ishii.

“We live in the flatlands near the railroad tracks, freeways, refinery, and airport, constantly exposed to various pollutants,” said Ms. Margaret Gordon, a longtime environmental justice advocate and resident of West Oakland. “This proposed coal terminal is one more burden we should not have to suffer under. Homes along the tracks lack indoor air filtration and air conditioning to block out coal dust, posing a direct threat to our health.

“Our health is just as important as corporate profits. Unhoused individuals are especially vulnerable and exposed to pollutants, as they do not have a home to protect their lungs,” said Ms. Margaret. “No coal in the Bay Area!”

The rally was lively, defiant, and hopeful, with street theater performances including larger-than-life puppets blocking mock coal trains, chants and songs lead by Singing Resistance, and banners created at a community art build organized by “artivist” David Solnit.

“Living in Oakland, I am sick and tired of my community being ground zero for toxic pollution and environmental injustice,” said Berkeley Youth Vs. Apocalypse member Ashley Jahja. “Our health, our lives are not disposable. The fight against the coal terminal started in West Oakland but with recent mapping, is going to impact the entire Bay Area. Our fight is your fight, and we have to do whatever it takes to prevent the coal terminal from happening.”

“Berkeleyans are not about to let the East Bay become a ‘sacrifice zone’ so developers and the coal mining industry can poison the planet while they get even richer,” said Steve Masover, Berkeley resident and No Coal in Oakland organizer. “We’re here tonight because we’re determined to stop this calamity.”

“As a primary care physician, mom and community organizer who lives in West Berkeley, I could not be more opposed to the efforts to build a dirty coal terminal by the Bay Bridge,” said Ashley McClure, MD, the Executive Director of Climate Health Now. “My patients are already dealing with asthma, heart disease and dementia – all of which scientific evidence assures us would be made worse by the dirty soot of toxic coal dust (primarily fine particulate matter, or PM2.5) from coal trains smothering our communities. We care too much about the health of our families and communities to let the selfish profit motives of the billionaire class hawking dirty fossil energy move this ludicrous plan forward. This misanthropic dirty energy plan stops here.”

“These coal trains will pass a few hundred feet from places where my kids play soccer or attend summer arts camp,” said Megan Wachspress, Berkeley parent. “My kids will breathe the dust off these railcars while they’re moving, and kids in West Oakland will breath even more dust while the cars sit and are unloaded. I have a responsibility to my kids and to all the kids and families along these tracks to stop toxic coal dust from entering the East Bay.”

The resolution was proposed in response to the massively unpopular coal terminal planned in Oakland, which would flood Berkeley and other Bay Area cities with toxic coal pollution from mile-long coal trains. In June of this year, President Trump announced $75 million in funding for the terminal. Developer Phil Tagami aims to build a terminal to export coal carried by rail from Utah to Martinez to West Oakland, where he plans to load coal onto ships bound for Asian markets.

This resolution is part of a growing wave of resistance throughout the East Bay and statewide: The City of Richmond passed a similar resolution in July. Coalition members are organizing in other cities along the East Bay portion of the rail route to pass their own resolutions. The California State Legislature passed Assembly Member Mia Bonta’s AB40 last month. Governor Newsom is being urged by dozens of labor, faith, and environmental organizations, Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas, and countless Californians to sign it into law.

Rosa Parks Elementary School contingent, Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Singing Resistance, Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Labor speaker Cihan Tugal, Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Banner, Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Kids against Coal, Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Berkeley Parent Sarah Berg at the mic, Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Coal Train (1000 Grandmothers), Photo Credit Leon Kunstenaar.

 

Images credit: Leon Kunstenaar