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Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) and Century Aluminum Company (NASDAQ: CENX) have entered into a joint development agreement to build the first new primary aluminum production plant in the United States since 1980.

The plant, to be built in Inola, Oklahoma, is expected to produce 750,000 tonnes of aluminum per year, larger than previously envisioned and more than doubling current US production, the companies said in a press release on Tuesday.

The project, named Oklahoma Primary Aluminum, would combine EGA’s expertise in aluminum smelting design and technology, construction and operation, with Century’s history and experience operating aluminum smelters in the US utilizing domestic supply chains.

Once complete, the Inola plant will be the largest ever primary aluminum production plant in the country, and the first built in nearly 50 years, Century said, noting that about 85% of the aluminum needs of American industries are currently met by imports.

The project is expected to create 1,000 permanent direct jobs at the facility and 4,000 jobs during the construction period. EGA will own 60% of the joint venture, with Century holding the remaining 40%.

“By establishing an aluminum hub in Oklahoma, we are strengthening and shortening the supply chain for a critical metal that supports American industries,” Century Aluminum CEO Jesse Gary said in a news release. “Today’s announcement highlights the multiplier effect of revitalizing domestic production — attracting new infrastructure investment and creating jobs in adjacent industries.”

The US Aluminum Company, founded by the Plotkin family, owners of aluminum fabrication company M-D Building Products, said in a separate statement that it has signed an agreement with both companies to explore the development of an aluminum fabrication plant near the new smelter.

The goal of the partnership is to build a plant near the smelter to turn liquid aluminum into products for the electrical, defense, aerospace, automotive and machinery industries, US Aluminum said.

“This project will help make Oklahoma – especially Inola – one of the top places in America to manufacture aluminum products, while creating thousands of new jobs for Oklahomans,” EGA chief executive officer Abdulnasser Bin Kalban said. “We’re proud to sign our first downstream exploratory agreement before the smelter is even built.”

Construction of Oklahoma Primary Aluminum is expected to begin by the end of 2026, targeting first production by the end of the decade.

In this episode of The Landscape, Aaron welcomes pollsters Lori Weigel from New Bridge Strategy and Miranda Everitt from FM3 to discuss the 16th annual Colorado College Conservation in the West Poll. The bipartisan polling team breaks down voter attitudes across eight Western states on public lands, conservation priorities, and the Trump administration’s funding cuts and policy rollbacks. The poll reveals consensus across party lines—including among MAGA voters—on protecting public lands, opposing sell-offs, and prioritizing renewable energy over fossil fuel extraction.

News

• Groups sue over Trump effort to ‘erase’ history, science in national parks – Washington Post
• Concessionaire Nominated To Run National Park Service – National Parks Traveler
• Water worries are top of mind for Arizonans, poll shows – Axios Phoenix
• Opinion: Senators, reject the Steve Pearce nomination – Santa Fe New Mexican

Resources

• 2026 Conservation in the West Poll – Colorado College
• Watch this episode on YouTube 

Credits

• Produced and hosted by Aaron Weiss with production support from Lauren Bogard, edited by Lilly Bock-Brownstein
• Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
• Music: Purple Planet
• Featured image: David Korzillus, BLM

The post Unpacking the 2026 Conservation in the West Poll appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Hycroft Mining Holding (Nasdaq: HYMC) soared on Tuesday after a securities filing revealed that Canadian billionaire mining investor Eric Sprott has continued to buy the stock despite its price skyrocketing over the past year.

Sprott, one of the company’s biggest investors, recently added 150,000 shares at a price of $42.05 each, for a total investment of $6.3 million, a securities filing showed on Monday. This purchase takes Sprott’s total holding to approximately 36.9 million shares, representing approximately 44.45% of those outstanding.

Hycroft surged by more than 12% on the report, taking the stock price to a one-month high of $47.47 during morning trading hours. The company has a current market capitalization of $3.8 billion, a monumental rise from the $50 million this time last year.

The Vancouver-based company was the top-ranked small-cap mining stock in the January edition of MINING.COM’s Global Mining Power Rankings.

Investment with AMC

Sprott made his first investment in Hycroft in 2022 as part of a $56 million equity private placement, where he, together with AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AMC), each bought $28 million worth of shares. Since then, Sprott has been accumulating shares in Hycroft, which has more than doubled in value as the business began to improve and prices of gold and silver started to rally.

In late 2025, Sprott bought most of AMC’s 22% stake in Hycroft for $24 million, as the movie theatre chain looked to cash out on its “opportunistic investment” in the mining space.

Nevada mine developer

Hycroft is currently developing a silver-gold project in northern Nevada with a brief history of production in the 1980s. While the mine originally operated as a heap leach operation, under Hycroft management, it is now pivoting to large-scale milling for processing sulfide ores. The project currently has permits for both heap leach and milling operations, with extensive infrastructure in place.

Earlier this month, Hycroft released an updated mineral resource for its project, showing 16.4 million oz. of gold and 562.6 million oz. of silver in the measured and indicated category, a 55% increase over its previous estimate. This included an initial high-grade silver resource with underground potential, totalling 90.2 million oz.

The inferred resource category also increased by 50% for gold and 38% for silver. These figures, the company’s CEO said in a Feb. 18 news release, indicate the “impressive resource growth in what is already among the world’s largest precious metals deposits.”

The beach bird nesting season has begun along Florida's coasts. Spring and summer mark critical times of year for five vulnerable species, which must avoid human disturbance, storms, and predators to...

This article How to build emergency response systems for the long haul was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Targeted state violence and rising fascism are being met with creative organizing by people in Minneapolis and across the country, from mass marches to neighborhood mutual aid to ICE watch foot patrols. These are all beautiful manifestations of resistance that have kept many people safe and demonstrated widespread repudiation of the Trump administration’s policies. 

Yet as state-sanctioned violence becomes more coordinated, normalized and national in scope, we must continue adapting our response systems to shifting needs. Emergency response structures set up in moments of crisis can often lead to isolated, reactive decision making with responsibility falling on a few shoulders, creating the conditions for burnout, security failures, movement fragmentation and individual and organizational missteps or even collapse. 

Here we can draw on some hard-earned lessons from our predecessors in the decades-long international accompaniment movement, who witness, stand with and provide security support for human rights defenders, communities and activists under attack by authoritarian regimes in Latin America. In response to sometimes devastating losses, accompaniment organizations developed a set of skills and strategies over many years for collaborative, sustainable decision making to respond to security incidents while under conditions of constant threat. We ourselves learned these skills in our many years of working with accompaniment organizations in Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia from 2008 to 2022.

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We share here principles and practices from this legacy, which we hope organizations and networks, whether formal or informal, can use to develop emergency response structures that are sustainable, don’t overly burden a few individuals with the difficult decision making, actively build collective capacity and shared analysis, and support skill-building for more people in our movements.

What we present here are suggestions, and we invite you to adapt them to particular organizations and situations. They may take a bit more planning and preparation than may seem available in moments of urgency. But if we want to sustain our movements for what, unfortunately, is likely to be a long struggle, we must begin now to put durable, collective and supportive structures into practice.

1. No one person decides alone

Decision making in emergency security situations is emotionally and mentally taxing. Stress can narrow our literal and metaphorical fields of vision. And because the weight of a decision can be incredibly heavy to bear — especially if things go wrong — no one ever made a decision alone in the accompaniment organizations of which we were a part. We had clearly established protocols for which people, based on their roles in the organization, would come together for specific emergency response decisions.

For example, we established regional subcommittees based on where a security incident occurred. Each subcommittee was composed of a security lead, a representative from the advocacy team and on-the-ground volunteers, who worked together to assess, analyze and respond to emergency situations. 

Applying this principle in a U.S. context, organizers of a publicly advertised protest could set a team of folks who gather at an office or a home to monitor social media and news reports for security incidents or threats, and be ready to make decisions about emergency response.

2. Prepare decision-making structures and roles beforehand

Emergency response or crisis moments are when people are most activated and are also the most likely to lead to organizational, interpersonal or movement conflict. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, we are being subjected to situations of prolonged violence directed at ourselves and people we care for. We want to show up in the best way possible, yet often also feel frustration, impotence or rage. 

In our accompaniment organizations, we mitigated stress and conflict (to the extent possible) by having clear processes and roles for decision making. 

First, we frontloaded as many decisions as possible before an emergency, allowing us to focus on the situation at hand rather than spend time debating who would do what and delaying important support for the impacted individuals. Knowing who is going to be involved in emergency response reduces the need for conversation and shortens the response time.

The Peace Brigade International accompanies the Front of People in Defense of Land and Water in Amilcingo, Mexico. (Facebook/Peace Brigades International)

We have seen this play out in high-risk moments in our accompaniment work. For example, when we responded to nationwide protests that extended over months and saw daily murders of protesters by military and police forces, we set up a rotating decision-making group. Because roles and communication channels had already been agreed upon, colleagues didn’t have to debate who should verify information, call other allied organizations or set up our emergency response protocol. They could simply act.

Second, we made decisions in consensus. While clear decision-making structures are essential, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be hierarchical. We’ve found in our accompaniment work that decisions are easier to implement when everyone has a hand in shaping them. A consensus-based decision-making structure keeps any one person from carrying the whole mental load (see “No one person decides alone”) and lets us actually use the full brainpower in the room. We all come with different lived experiences, risk tolerances and ways of thinking, which means we’re bound to catch things others won’t and, luckily, vice versa.  

This works best when folks talk it out together and create a clear timeline to decide. In the example above, if the group got stuck, they would start with a quick break to rest and regroup, and if that fails, go to a smaller predesignated subgroup — and, if even that doesn’t work, have a clear fallback decision-maker. Something else we’ve learned: Consensus tends to work better when we trust each other and each other’s criteria, so it helps to make the effort to get to know each other, grab a coffee or go for a walk before the emergencies happen.

3. Some participants in decision making should be offsite 

It might seem logical that those directly involved in the emergency response should be onsite, able to see the situation firsthand and respond immediately. In fact, we learned in our accompaniment work that involving folks offsite as advisors or even decision makers can provide essential perspective, bring in crucial information and further spread the decision-making burden. 

In one protest scenario, while tensions escalated on the ground, an off-site team a few blocks away tracked both police staging and local news sources and relayed that information back to organizers. This wider view allowed on-the-ground leadership to make informed choices without relying only on what was immediately visible.

4. Rotate the decision makers

Holding a decision-making role in an emergency situation is not easy; it means putting your body on high alert, navigating complex situations and grappling with violence directed at our communities. This, unsurprisingly, takes a toll on us over an extended period of time (more on this below). 

Previous Coverage

Lessons in courage, care and collective action from the international accompaniment movement

Even if we believe we can hold this indefinitely, the reality is that, without moments to regulate our nervous systems, our bodies normalize the constant alertness, making it harder to activate when necessary and to properly analyze what is truly an emergency. We want our emergency decision makers to be well-rested, regulated and connected — for their wellbeing and ours, too. 

That’s why we recommend that the decision makers in an emergency situation shift on an agreed-upon rotation. Depending on organizational structure, the best rotation might be every protest or event, or it might be a time period, like a week. This not only gives us a chance to skill up more folks in emergency response (always a benefit for our movements!), but it also gives us decision makers a chance to rest and recharge.

In the protest scenario previously mentioned, once things settled for the day, the people who had been making decisions rotated out. Some went home to sleep; others took quiet time away from phones and updates. A few days later, once they were rested enough to look at what they’d learned and what might need to change next time, they checked back in for the follow-up stage.

5. Institute Urgency Guides

Prolonged emergency situations make it harder over time to accurately recognize urgency. When everything feels critical, true emergencies can become blurred. Clear guidelines help mediate this by providing structure and clarity for decision making under sustained stress. In our accompaniment work, we used the following guidelines to categorize our responses: 

On alert (prior to emergency): The situation seems to be escalating. We have seen a few signs indicating the risk level may be increasing (increased presence of armed actors, state or non-state, counter-protesters gathering, surveillance signs, suspected infiltration, etc.). Start to notify the security team (on and offsite) and start to implement increased security measures.

Immediate response (minutes to hours after): The emergency situation is active; the threat has not yet passed and there is potential for the situation to escalate or repeat. The physical and emotional well-being of impacted individuals is prioritized immediately. 

Rapid (24 to 48 hours after): The specific situation has passed, but there is potential of it repeating in the near future. This could be because we will go to the same location in the next few days, or the event we are hosting will continue, or the aggressor is still nearby or indicating potential harm to our communities. 

Follow-up (a few days to weeks after): The situation has passed. Here we focus on analysis and whether we need to adapt our organizational and movement strategy. This is also a great time to broaden the analysis by including allies in answering questions like: What was the aggressor’s desired impact? Have we seen this strategy used before? What are the increased security measures we may need to implement based on this situation? 

We have used this for years in accompaniment spaces, allowing us to clearly mark stages in our response and who had to be involved. For example, when activists we were supporting suffered an assassination attempt, the attention moved from split-second decisions (immediate response) to checking in with impacted participants, ensuring medical attention, locating others who could be targeted next and finding safe houses, to adjusting security plans for the next day and watching for signs the situation might flare up again (rapid response). Later still, the group circled back to look at what had happened and what it meant going forward (follow up).

6. Establish ways to take care of yourself and your team before and after taking on decision-making roles.

When stepping into an emergency response decision-making role, it is essential to shore up your emotional resources before an emergency and repair your heart and mind afterward. This will look different for everyone, but all organizations and networks should dedicate time and space for everyone involved in emergency response to do this. You might employ the same tools for shoring up and for repairing: They could include a nice walk with your dog, tea with a close friend, reading a good book or taking a bath. 

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Whatever you need to rest and recharge, identify those activities and build them into your plans. We know this is hard, and to be clear, this level of care has not always been consistently present within accompaniment organizations; its absence often contributes to rapid turnover and diminished response capacity. Naming this matters. After more than a decade of collective work in emergency accompaniment, we have seen clearly that constant crisis response is not sustainable if people’s nervous systems are never given real opportunities to rest and regulate.

This is why we believe it is so important to speak directly about intentional, collective care practices not as an ideal, but as a necessary condition for the longevity and effectiveness of accompaniment and emergency response itself. 

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel

These tools aren’t a panacea for the real risks presented by escalating state violence. They won’t stop all arrests, injuries, raids, deportations or assassinations. They won’t undo the harm already done or bring back the people we’ve lost. But the more we incorporate skillful emergency response tools into our repertoire, the more we can stay connected to one another under pressure, reduce preventable harm, and keep showing up again and again without burning out, fragmenting or turning on each other. 

None of this work is new. We are drawing from the accumulated knowledge of mentors, organizers, human rights defenders, journalists, accompaniers, medics, lawyers and movement elders who have spent decades responding to fascist and authoritarian governments across regions and generations. From underground networks resisting military dictatorships, to civil rights organizers facing state-sanctioned terror, Indigenous land defenders, abolitionists, anti-colonial movements and transnational solidarity networks, people have long been building collective security, emergency response and care structures under conditions that mirror in many ways what we are facing now.

Luckily, this means we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We just need to know how to look to the past, to other contexts and to each other for guidance and support. The more intentional we are, the better we’ll be able to keep up the struggle so that, one day soon, we will not just have survived fascism but defeated it.

This article How to build emergency response systems for the long haul was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Earlier this month, European Union leaders agreed to press ahead with a ‘Buy European’ policy to protect strategic sectors of the bloc’s industry, but in doing so they risk overlooking the critical minerals sector that underpins our place in the global economy.

When most people picture “strategic sectors,” they think of car production lines and steel foundries. Yet every product begins with raw materials. Whoever controls raw materials controls the first link in the chain, shaping supply chains, prices, industrial continuity and, ultimately, economic sovereignty.

If Europe wants a serious industrial strategy, it cannot focus only on end products. It must think vertically, from geology to processing, from refining to components, from manufacturing to strategic stockpiles. That is resilience by design. Without it, Europe will remain structurally vulnerable and exposed to the decisions of the superpowers that control upstream supply.

EU selects 47 strategic projects to secure critical minerals access

The 1990s were described as “the end of history.” Fukuyama’s phrase captured a belief in an increasingly borderless world. In 2026, borders remain firmly in place, and Europe sits between two competing power centres. China has inherited 18th-century Britain’s title as the “workshop of the world,” with a manufacturing base unrivalled in scale and cost. The US leads in investment and technological innovation on a similarly unmatched scale.

Both now understand that industry does not begin at the factory gate. China has thought vertically for decades, securing mining rights, building refining capacity, locking in offtakes and shaping entire supply ecosystems. The US has woken up to this reality and is acting in ways that should serve as a warning to Europe.

As the world enters an AI-driven age that demands advanced manufacturing at unprecedented scale, Europe must define its role. The ‘Buy European’ programme rightly recognises the need to protect and strengthen our high-quality manufacturing base. Despite mounting external pressures, Europe still builds things exceptionally well.

But what about the materials needed to build them? Statements from the latest EU summit focused almost entirely on finished products. Leaders warned of factory closures and declining investment creating an “existential crisis.” They said little about critical minerals.

Europe faces copper shortages unless EU halts scrap exports, industry says

This silence is increasingly indefensible. The US has launched the DFC fund to finance secure supply chains and back strategic projects across the value chain, ensuring access to the minerals that underpin advanced manufacturing, defence, energy security and technological leadership.

It is also making direct strategic moves. In February 2026, the US-backed Orion Critical Mineral Consortium, supported by the US International Development Finance Corp. and Abu Dhabi’s ADQ, agreed to acquire a 40% stake in Glencore’s Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper Company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, implying an enterprise value of about $9 billion. This is strategy in action. It recognises that minerals at the base of the value chain are levers of national power.

Europe, too, has substantial resources beneath its feet. The IEA’s 2025 outlook values the sector at nearly €30 billion ($35 billion), while the European Commission estimates its potential at several multiples of that figure.

Yet many assume critical minerals are the domain of China and the US. Attention often focuses on the scramble for concessions in sub-Saharan Africa, with Europe treated as an afterthought. This assumption is wrong and risks steering policy down a short-sighted path.

Mineral edge

Europe can extract or refine copper, lithium, high-purity alumina, phosphate and titanium at significant scale. Each is essential to the industrial transition now under way. Scaling renewables to meet ambitious climate targets will require vast quantities of these materials. The same will happen with the accelerating shift to EVs. Phosphate underpins food security through fertilizer and supports defence production. Titanium remains indispensable for defence and aerospace. These minerals will shape the economic and strategic landscape of the coming decades.

Critical minerals may be largely invisible to the public, but they will play a growing role in daily life and future prosperity. Where we source them, how we transport them and what we pay for them will remain open questions for years to come.

The European Union must bring its leaders back to the table and update the ‘Buy European’ approach. A strategy focused solely on manufacturing sees only part of the picture. Integrating critical minerals would place Europe on firmer ground as it navigates between the twin giants of the US and China.

* Michael Wurmser is the founder of Norge Mineraler

For the first time, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted oil companies’ request to weigh in on whether climate accountability lawsuits are preempted by federal law — setting the stage for a battle that could determine if dozens of similar cases are allowed to move toward trial.

The decision means the court will hear arguments from ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to overturn an earlier ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which decided that a case brought by Boulder, Colorado, could move ahead in state court. You can read more about the companies’ petition in ExxonKnews and DeSmog’s previous coverage.

Oil companies have previously and repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to take up issues in the lawsuits, which point to growing evidence that the companies spent decades deceiving the public about climate change and blocked the transition to renewable energy. Since a narrow procedural ruling in 2021, the companies were rejected each time.

But two factors were different this time: the Trump administration urged the justices to take the oil companies’ petition in Boulder’s case, and Justice Samuel Alito participated in discussion of the case, despite recusing himself in the past.

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Alito owns up to $15,000 in stock in ConocoPhillips and between $15,000 and $50,000 in Phillips 66. Those companies are defendants in other cities’ and states’ climate lawsuits, whose fate could be determined by a ruling in Boulder’s case.

Alito clearly acknowledged his conflict of interest in the past, because he recused himself from considering several other appeals related to the climate accountability lawsuits — including a nearly identical petition in Honolulu’s case, which the Supreme Court rejected last year. He even recused himself in Boulder’s case when it was brought before the high court on a jurisdictional question in 2023.

Back then, Exxon’s lawyers argued that Boulder’s case was an “ideal vehicle” for Supreme Court review because it “involves a smaller group of defendants and thus is less likely than those [other climate deception] cases to present recusal issues.” Translation: the companies that posed financial conflicts for some justices were not parties in this specific case. (Amy Coney Barrett’s father was a longtime lawyer for Shell and had a leadership role at the American Petroleum Institute).

Alito has not always recused from cases that would impact companies in which he has financial investments. When oil-funded Republican attorneys general petitioned the court to shut down similar state lawsuits in which ConocoPhillips and Phillips66 were defendants, he not only participated in reviewing the request, but also joined Justice Clarence Thomas in a dissent arguing the court should have taken it.

But Alito did recuse himself from a case the Supreme Court heard in January about oil companies’ liability for coastal damage in Louisiana, even though ConocoPhillips and Phillips66 were not direct defendants in that case, either. That was because ConocoPhillips is the parent company of Burlington Resources Oil and Gas Company, a defendant in the lawsuit in the lower courts, but not part of the oil companies’ arguments before the Supreme Court.

According to his 2024 financial disclosure, Alito also invested up to $100,000 in a high-dividend yield that listed Exxon as its third largest holding as of January.

In 2023, the Supreme Court published an unenforceable code of conduct which stated that a justice should recuse from hearing a case if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” including because that justice or their spouse has “a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding.”

The code qualifies that “ownership in a mutual or common investment fund that holds securities is not a ‘financial interest’ in such securities unless the judge participates in the management of the fund.” It also says that ““the rule of necessity may override the rule of disqualification” — in other words, if a tie-breaking vote is needed, a judge with conflicts of interest may be asked to participate.

Lisa Graves, executive director of national investigative watchdog group True North Research, said it was “no coincidence” that the court took up Exxon’s plea. Between Alito’s financial ties to oil companies, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s father’s long employment for the oil industry, Clarence Thomas’s relationship with the Koch brothers, and the influence of Leonard Leo, who helped pick many of the justices on today’s court and has worked hand in hand with Koch networks, the court is “captured with the help of carbon cash,” Graves said.

Exxon and Suncor have also had help from the Trump administration and the GOP in getting their petition before the court. After an executive order from the President instructing the Department of Justice to block the cases, the DOJ submitted an unsolicited brief in support of the companies’ request. More than 100 Republican members of Congress also filed a brief on behalf of the companies, asking the justices to protect the industry from cases that “would restructure the American energy industry if not bankrupt it altogether.”

Big Oil and Leonard Leo muster their forces

As some climate lawsuits have inched closer to trial, the fossil fuel industry has gotten more desperate to stop them. “I have to win every case that is brought,” said Exxon assistant general counsel Justin Anderson at a November panel discussion hosted by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal advocacy group funded in part by fossil fuel interests and co-chaired by Leonard Leo. “They just need to find one they can get through — and that’s why it is so important for the Supreme Court to take this case.”

The U.S. oil lobby and their allies in state and federal government — along with the same Leo network that helped stack the court — have been ramping up pressure on lawmakers to pass a “liability waiver,” or a bill that would immunize the fossil fuel industry from such lawsuits. Last week, U.S. Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) said she was working to draft such a bill.

At the state level, lawmakers in Utah and Oklahoma have introduced bills that would shield fossil fuel companies from climate liability; Utah’s is now awaiting the governor’s signature. Those bills appear to draw from a model bill published by Consumer Defense, a Leonard Leo-linked project, the New York Times reported. Alliance for Consumers, another Leo-tied project, has also been behind other broader state bills that would limit corporate liability. The Leo network has also pressured the Supreme Court to step into the climate accountability cases on behalf of oil companies.

The DOJ has also attempted, unsuccessfully, to preemptively block Michigan and Hawaiʻi from filing climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.

“It’s a bad sign for sure” for the plaintiffs that the justices took the case, said Pat Parenteau, an environmental law professor and senior fellow at Vermont Law School. But, Parenteau noted, the court may not end up ruling on the preemption question at all. In their decision to grant review, the justices said they would consider the question of whether the court has jurisdiction over the case, considering there has not yet been any final decision from a lower court on its merits.

While the Trump administration has backed the industry in fighting the lawsuits, its EPA also recently repealed the Endangerment Finding, the scientific finding behind federal greenhouse gas regulation in the United States. That decision could undermine the companies’ preemption argument and open up a new front for litigation against the fossil fuel industry.

Boulder’s lawsuit argues that the companies violated state laws like public nuisance, trespass and conspiracy, among others, and should help communities pay to adapt and recover from increasingly devastating and expensive climate disasters.

“The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision was correct in holding that these state law claims for in-state injuries can continue in state court,” said Michelle Harrison of legal advocacy nonprofit EarthRights International, who serves as co-counsel for Boulder. “Exxon’s ever-evolving arguments as to why they should be immunized from such claims are baseless.”

Exxon is represented in the Boulder case by Paul Weiss, a law firm that has worked to defend a wide range of corporate clients from liability and, last year, cut a deal to work for Trump. The firm’s longtime chairman recently resigned after his name appeared multiple times in emails with Jeffrey Epstein.

This month, the firm notified courts in Connecticut, Hawaiʻi, Maine and Washington state that they would no longer be representing Exxon in pending climate lawsuits there.

The post Supreme Court Will Hear Exxon’s Effort to Crush Climate Lawsuits appeared first on DeSmog.

Ero Copper (TSX, NYSE: ERO) has reached a key milestone in the development of the Furnas project in Para, Brazil, which is being advanced in partnership with Vale Base Metals, following the release of the project’s first-ever preliminary economic assessment (PEA).

The report highlighted a large-scale operation with four distinct mining areas that would produce approximately 1.2 million tonnes of copper, 2 million million oz. of gold and 9 million oz. of silver over a 24-year life. Over the first 15 years, its average annual copper-equivalent production could reach 108,000 tonnes, according to the PEA.

For comparison, Ero produced 64,307 tonnes of copper last year, a new record, as well as 37,291 oz of gold across its three sites in Brazil.

Using long-term copper, gold and silver prices of $4.60/lb., $3,300/oz. and $40/oz. respectively, the PEA gave the Furnas project an after-tax net present value (at 8% discount) of $2 billion and a 27% internal rate of return. Its initial capital cost is estimated at $1.3 billion, for a low capital intensity of approximately $16,000/t copper equivalent.

Shares of Ero Copper jumped as much as 9% to nearly C$47 apiece in Toronto, giving the company a market capitalization of C$4.83 billion ($3.52 billion). The stock’s 52-week high was C$53.69.

Multiple drilling campaigns

The PEA results, says Ero Copper chief executive officer Makko DeFilippo, showed “what an exceptional asset” the Furnas project is, adding that the report is the “culmination of multiple exploration drilling campaigns and a strong foundation of engineering and technical studies” for over a decade.

The project was previously worked on by Vale (NYSE: VALE) and Anglo American (LSE: AAL), which together completed 90,000 meters of drilling. The property covers 2,400 hectares within the Carajás mineral province and sits approximately 50 kilometers southeast of Vale Base Metals’ Salobo copper operations.

Ero partnered with Vale in late 2023 and now holds the right to earn into 60% of the Furnas project after the parties reached an agreement in July 2024. As sole funder of exploration, Ero has so far completed 45,000 meters of drilling in two phases.

Based on the Phase 1 drilling (28,000 meters) alone, the company produced a current resource estimate of 275.6 million tonnes indicated grading 0.83% copper equivalent and 195.9 million tonnes inferred grading 0.76% copper equivalent.

Trump tariff bailout sends billions to mega farms, speeding consolidation JR Culpepper February 24, 2026

Nearly 40% of the $11 billion taxpayer-funded farm bailout meant to offset the effects of the Trump administration tariffs, known as bridge payments, will likely flow to the largest farms.

An EWG analysis found that farms growing more than 1,000 acres of commodity crops would take in the large percent of the bailout, the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program. 

This latest bailout, unveiled in December, reinforces the longstanding pattern of federal farm aid disproportionately benefiting the biggest, most profitable farm operations in the country. This will increase costs in the agricultural sector and further add to the decline of small farms, consolidating farming in corporate mega farms.

Payments flow to largest farms

The imbalance is especially stark for corn and soybean farm operations. 

Farms growing more than 1,000 acres of corn make up just 6.3% of farms growing corn. But EWG projects they will collect 39.9% of all corn payments. 

Soybean payments show a similar imbalance: Farms growing more than 1,000 acres of soybeans account for just 7.6% of soybean farms but will collect 42.5% of all soybean payments. 

Even bigger soybean farms – those with more than 2,000 acres, or 1.8% of soybean farms – will receive nearly one-fifth of all soybean payments. 

Tied to production

Bridge payments are tied to production of certain commodity crops on farmed acres, so the largest farms collect the biggest payments – whether they need it or not. Recent changes to farm subsidy rules could allow large farm partnerships to collect even more funding. 

Farms growing these crops on fewer than 1,000 acres will receive smaller payments. 

It’s not just corn and soybeans: With other crops, too, larger amounts of aid go to the biggest farms.CropPercent farms with 1,000 or more acres Percent of bridge payments likely to go to farms of 1,000 or more acresPayments likely to go to farms with 1,000 or more acres (in millions) Barley5.3%38.2%$17.4 Canola13.8%40.6%$22.4 Chickpeas11.1%36.1%$5.9 Corn6.3%39.9%$1,723 Cotton17.1%59.1%$633 Flaxseed5.8%25.3%$516 Oats0.3%5.9%$10 Peanuts4.0%24.4%$26.4 Peas8.4%34.4%$9.75 Rice19.8%54.8%$204.5 Safflower6.9%43.0%$1.25 Sorghum8.0%43.5%$129 Soybeans7.6%42.5%$1,054Wheat10.6%56.1%$1,079

Source: EWG from USDA 2022 Census of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency December 2025 Crop Acreage Data, USDA Farmer Bridge Assistance Program

Fueling consolidation

Trump’s tariffs have closed markets to U.S. farmers and raised the cost of essential farm machinery and supplies, including equipment, seeds and chemicals. 

Farm household income is expected to increase in 2026, largely boosted by federal government payments. But as farm production costs rise, many small farms are struggling. 

Increasing payments to the largest farms will add pressure to small farms. The higher payments will further raise the cost of the supplies needed to run a farm, as well the cost of buying and renting farmland. 

In 2025, 15,000 farms went out of business. Most were small farms. 

Disparities in bridge payments are similar to those following past Trump bailouts. Under the Market Facilitation Program, created to offset the impacts of tariffs during the first Trump administration’s trade war, the largest 5% of farms received 41% of all payments. 

Experts later found that many farms got far more than they needed to offset the effects of the trade war. They also determined that 2,000 high income farms received more than $160 million – 20 of those farms each received more than $2 million.

Next week the House Agriculture Committee will debate the farm bill – it probably won’t do much to help small farms. The bill will likely continue the status quo and does not include subsidy limits that would level the playing field between large and small farms. 

Methodology

EWG analyzed:

• Data from the 2022 agricultural census on the distribution of farms by acreage category
• The USDA’s bridge assistance reported payment rates
• Reported 2025 crop acreage data from the USDA’s Farm Service Agency

Calculated percentages of the agricultural census’ reported numbers of farms and acres by size category were determined. These percentages by size category were applied to the 2025 reported planted acres. This provides an approximate distribution of 2025 planted acres by size. 

We then multiplied the number of acres in each size category by the payment rates set by the Farm Bridge Assistance Program. That gave us the total amount of assistance that would be received by farms in each size category and what share of the total payments those categories would take in. 

The 2022 agricultural census data on the percentage of that number of farms by size category was used in the comparison to projected payments made based on 2025 acres. 

The analysis did not include payments for insured crops that were never planted, because of the interference of an insured weather event, known as “prevented planted acres”. Those payments will not be included in the program.

Areas of Focus Farming & Agriculture Climate & Agriculture Factory Farms Authors Jared Hayes February 24, 2026

The U.S. Department of the Interior is withholding key ethics disclosure information about Karen Budd-Falen, a high-ranking Interior official who is under fire for her undisclosed financial ties with a massive Nevada lithium mine.

This is the latest in a growing ethics scandal involving Budd-Falen. In December 2025, Public Domain and High Country News reported that Budd-Falen was working at Interior in 2018 when her husband signed an agreement to sell water rights from their ranch, Home Ranch, to Lithium Nevada Corporation. The New York Times reported that the deal was for $3.5 million.

Now, in response to a FOIA request from the Center for Western Priorities, the Interior department has released 91 pages of ethics documents from her time working at Interior during both Trump administrations. The release redacted crucial information, including parts of her recusal memos—the documents that detail the matters she should not engage in to avoid a conflict of interest. It did, however, show that on November 5, 2018, Budd-Falen received a partial waiver to retain her financial interests in Home Ranch and other ranching operations.

The same day, Budd-Falen signed a written statement acknowledging that the waiver does not authorize her to participate in matters that have a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests involving Home Ranch. In a separate ethics recusal, she noted that her husband, Frank Falen, “does not actively manage Home Ranch, LLC.”

Less than a month later, Home Ranch, LLC struck a deal to sell water to Lithium Nevada Corp. The deal was signed by Frank Falen, who was listed in the agreement as the ranch manager.

“She had an obligation to disclose it,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities. “It appears she did not disclose it. And therefore everything else here is tainted.”

Quick hits Report: Communities of color and those with low incomes are bearing the brunt of America’s nature loss

Center for American Progress

The owners want to close this Colorado coal plant. The Trump administration says no

NPR

Veterans urge senators to vote ‘no’ on BLM nominee Wednesday

Wyoming Public Radio

Trump administration to remove decades-old protections from Interior Alaska land

Alaska Beacon

‘I won’t sit back’: Fired Yosemite National Park ranger sues Interior department

SFGATE | The Hill

Can Colorado mute Trump’s orders to revive coal burning? A new bill will try

Colorado Sun

Slavery exhibit court fight tests how America tells its founding story

Axios

Opinion: Public lands teach connection to place, wildlife and each other

WyoFile

Quote of the day

Public lands are the American commons—a shared legacy we treasure and one we will fight to keep.”

—Walt Gasson, writer and fourth generation Wyoming native, WyoFile

Picture This @zionnps

You can still be our vole-ntine!

Montane voles (Microtus montanus) are small rodents that inhabit regions from the western United States to southeastern Canada and Alaska. These small fuzzy critters eat grasses, tubers, bark, and sometimes insects, which helps keep habitats from becoming overgrown and promotes biodiversity. Their burrowing and trackway habits help to aerate and break up otherwise hard soils. Voles are also key species to the desert food chain: birds of prey as well as snakes, bobcats, and foxes think a vole is a tasty treat. There’s nothing like a vole from your sweet-hawk!

This vole (ZION 485) serves a higher calling than midday snack: scientific research specimen! Biological research specimens such as this one are highly important to systematics, public health and epidemiology, agriculture, defense, and more. Specimens are snapshots in time, as they allow a complete visualization of what that critter looked like at the time it was collected; this can help researchers determine how the size, coloration, and presence or absence of features like long tails or small ears have changed due to environmental stimuli. This specimen serves as a reminder of what montane voles looked like in 1934, when she was collected (check the tag!), and is evidence of the species’ presence in the park at that time.

NPS/j.Hemphill

 

(Featured image: Karen Budd-Falen speaks at a 2024 Western Ag and Environmental Law Conference. uacescomm, Flickr)

The post Documents uncover new details in Interior official’s growing ethics scandal appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

An anti-net zero lobby group with ties to the Conservative Party held an event in the United States to raise funds for its pro-fossil fuel agenda, DeSmog can report. 

Net Zero Watch (NZW), which campaigns against net zero targets and renewable energy, put on an evening panel on “Net Zero and Freedom” in New York on Thursday (February 19), where speakers attacked the UK’s climate targets and praised President Donald Trump’s energy policies. 

They also appealed to the U.S. audience for “financial support”, and claimed partial credit for the Conservatives’ net zero U-turn. 

This is the latest example of climate deniers working across the Atlantic. DeSmog has previously reported on how U.S. groups close to President Trump are building ties with allies in Europe to push their anti-green agenda.

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Net Zero Watch is the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a London-based think tank founded by Tory peer Nigel Lawson, which has described CO2 emissions as a “benefit to the planet”, and campaigns for new fossil fuel extraction in the UK. 

The event last week, attended by DeSmog, was held at the swanky Penn Club in midtown Manhattan, and appears to be the group’s first to take place in the United States since its rebrand in 2021. 

It was hosted by the American Friends of the GWPF, a U.S. group which has received funding from oil interests, and donated large sums to its UK affiliate.  

“It has been clear for many years that Net Zero Watch has been acting against the best interests of the British households and businesses by promoting climate change denial,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on climate change and the environment at the London School of Economics. 

“But this shows that is now part of a campaign to make the UK more dependent on fossil fuel markets that are controlled by the United States, the world’s biggest producer of both oil and natural gas.”

The burning of fossil fuels makes up the vast majority of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions — and climate scientists warn a rapid phaseout is essential to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change. 

‘Things Are Great’

Drinks and canapés were circulated at the New York event, alongside a selection of Net Zero Watch policy papers. The group’s director Andrew Montford, GWPF advisor and former energy editor John Constable, and Steve Baker, a former Brexit minister and influential Tory backbench MP, all spoke at the event, which was attended by around 30 older men in suits. 

Baker, who lost his seat in the 2024 general election, was a director of the GWPF director between July 2021 and September 2022. He also ran the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, an anti-net zero caucus made up of backbench Conservative MPs which worked closely with the GWPF. 

In Montford’s remarks, he described net zero in the UK as a cautionary tale for the U.S., and praised Trump’s energy policies. Since his November 2024 re-election, Trump has slashed funding for climate research, dismantled support for wind and solar, and focused on “unleashing” oil and gas production. 

“Things are great here at the moment,” Montford said. “[U.S. Energy Secretary] Chris Wright’s doing a great job, and President Trump is sort of leading you in the right direction on energy.” 

Montford also appealed to the U.S. audience for funding. He said: “One of the reasons I’m here is that is to ask for if people can help us financially.” He described NZW as “a two-man team plus a lot of associates, but we punch well above our weight”. 

American Friends

The NZW event was hosted by Francis Menton, a New York-based retired lawyer who criticises climate policy on his blog Manhattan Contrarian. 

He opened the event by welcoming Trump’s recent scrapping of the 2009 “endangerment finding” — the U.S. government’s official policy that deemed greenhouse gases damaging to health and the environment. Menton said he and “a handful of people” had pursued this reversal for ten years. 

Menton is president and board member of the American Friends of GWPF, which has received significant funding from oil interests. 

In 2022, The Guardian revealed that American Friends of the GWPF had channeled more than $860,000 to the UK affiliate between 2018 and 2020, amounting to 45 percent of its funding for this period. 

This included money from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, a U.S. oil dynasty with millions invested in ExxonMobil and Chevron, and from Donors Trust, which is funded by the Koch Industries oil family. 

Menton is a member of the CO2 Coalition, a U.S. group which describes CO2 as “plant food” and denies the link between emissions and global warming. The group received $662,000 from charities funded by the Koch Industries oil dynasty between 1997 and 2017.

The GWPF ended its formal ownership of NZW in 2024 after a Charity Commission review, but the groups continue to support each others’ work. 

The NZW website’s “support us” page says “readers in the USA may prefer to give to the American Friends of the GWPF.” 

Net Zero U-Turn

The U.S. event comes as UK climate policy is under renewed attack from Trump ally Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has pledged to scrap net zero, end support for renewable energy, and back new oil, gas and coal power. Reform is currently leading the polls at around 29 percent.

It is also being opposed by the Conservative Party, which under Kemi Badenoch has dropped its previous support for climate action, calling the UK’s 2050 net zero target “impossible” and pledging to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act. 

At the NZW event, Baker welcomed this development. He called net zero a “policy disaster which it seems likely will be repealed by the next centre-right government”, adding: “Kemi Badenoch the Conservative leader is committed to that, and the Reform party has also made similar commitments.”

During the Q&A, DeSmog asked if the panel was advising Reform UK. Baker replied that he was not, but took partial credit for Badenoch’s turn against net zero. 

He said: “No, I’ve said very plainly I won’t be doing so. But I’m pleased that Kemi has adopted the policy and certainly helped her and Claire Coutinho adopt it. I’m very clear that net zero is inimical to human freedom and our prosperity.”

As DeSmog has reported, Tory shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho recently endorsed three policy papers attacking climate policies, all produced by writers and organisations with ties to the fossil fuel industry. Two of the reports were by authors who have written for GWPF and NZW. 

Last week Coutinho appeared in a NZW social media video criticising the UK’s clean power agenda, in which she claimed that net zero would make Brits “poorer”. 

The claim, widely used by climate science deniers, is rejected by experts. In July 2025, the UK’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility concluded that reaching net zero is much more affordable than previously thought — and far less expensive than unchecked climate change. 

The Conservative Party, Net Zero Watch, GWPF and Steve Baker were all contacted for comment. 

The post Tory-Linked Climate Denial Group Seeks Funds in Trump’s America appeared first on DeSmog.

Hudbay Minerals (TSX, NYSE: HBM) has secured permission from the British Columbia government to proceed with a three-phased expansion of its Copper Mountain mine that would extend the operation into 2040.

In a statement issued on Feb. 20, Hudbay said it has secured amended environmental permits issued by the BC Major Mines Office for the New Ingerbelle expansion project at Copper Mountain, one of the largest copper producers in Canada. Currently, the open-pit mine located 20 km south of Princeton is expected to run until 2033.

The project comprises a series of nested pit designs that are “pushbacks” on the existing historical Ingerbelle pit, designed to unlock access to higher-grade mineralization to boost the Copper Mountain mine’s copper production by 90%, according to company material.

Upon completion, the New Ingerbelle expansion is expected to add 10 years of mining to Copper Mountain, extending the mine schedule from 2027 to 2037. During the extended lifespan, it is projected to contribute approximately 750,000 tonnes of copper, 900,000 oz. of gold and 5.5 million oz. of silver production, based on current reserves, Hudbay said.

From 2036 to 2040, the open-pit mine operation would begin re-handling low-grade ore stockpile and enter the reclamation and closure phase.

Shares of Hudbay rose over 3% as of midday Tuesday to close in on an all-time high. The company has a market capitalization of C$14.5 billion ($10.6 billion).

Economic driver

Beyond its mineral output, the expansion serves as an economic engine for BC, as it is expected to generate over C$11.5 billion in provincial GDP and preserve 800 direct jobs, the company said.

“The Ingerbelle expansion will ensure hundreds of good jobs are retained for the Princeton community, providing economic benefits to the community and the province for years to come,” Jagrup Brar, BC’s Minister for Mining and Critical Minerals, commented in a press release.

Hudbay said it proactively engaged local communities for collaborative oversight throughout the permitting process and recently signed participation agreements with two First Nations groups.

BC support

Approval of Hudbay’s New Ingerbelle expansion project is the latest example of British Columbia’s push to bolster its supply of minerals key to the energy transition. The support extends beyond current producers. Last week, the province selected three early-stage developments, including two copper projects, for expedited permitting.

“The New Ingerbelle permit ensures that we’ll be able to advance this major project while extending our partnership with local communities to facilitate additional growth investments at Copper Mountain and further adds to our 99 years of successful operations in Canada,” Hudbay CEO Peter Kukielski said in a press release.

The Copper Mountain mine has a rich history dating back to 1884, evolving from early underground operations to a major open-pit producer in the 1920s. However, due to market conditions, it was shut down in 1959 and was left idled for approximately three decades. The modern mine restarted in 2011 under its previous owner.

Hudbay becomes sole owner of Copper Mountain mine in British Columbia

The Toronto-based miner acquired Copper Mountain in June 2023. The site features a 45,000-tonne-per-day processing plant that utilizes a conventional crushing, grinding and flotation circuit to produce copper concentrates with gold and silver credits. Last year, it produced 22,445 tonnes of copper, 19,465 oz. of gold and 221,406 oz. of silver.

Parents tending to their offspring are some of the most endearing moments in nature, so it’s no wonder that photographers strive to capture these interactions. Last year, like any other year, the...

The post Bloomberg: Wall Street’s Oil Deals Have Climate Activists Resorting to New Tactics appeared first on Stop the Money Pipeline.

The post Corporate Knights: New climate-finance campaign targets Costco’s partnership with Citibank appeared first on Stop the Money Pipeline.

Duke Energy remains a top polluter despite long-running pretense that super-potent methane doesn’t count

NC regulators yesterday claimed the state’s climate pollution is the “lowest in decades.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The long-running deception, crafted by Duke Energy and decried by scientists, is to focus on carbon dioxide emissions while leaving out upstream and power plant releases (pg. 24-25) of super-potent methane.

That’s like claiming apple pie is a health food by pretending the sugar doesn’t matter – and doubling the order for school cafeterias for decades to come.

Methane has caused two-thirds as much global warming as has CO2. But Duke Energy plans to build more gas-fired generation than any other US power provider – some 12,300 MW (pg. 13) of power plants by 2040, continuing to drive up power bills for people across North Carolina.

A 2025 report ranks Duke Energy as the third largest climate polluter in the US.

Drew Shindell, a globally prominent climatologist at Duke University, said today, “DEQ says that Duke’s expansion of gas and extension of coal is expected to reverse the trend in NC and drive increases in emissions over 2022-2030, which will fuel more Helenes and Florences, more sea-level rise pulling houses from the Outer Banks, more summer heatwaves, more deaths from air pollution, and higher costs than residents would face with more renewables instead of fossil fuels.”

It is encouraging that other emissions are down across the state, but expanding the use of methane overmatches the positive impacts of reduced coal-fired power. And Duke now plans to keep burning coal – and possibly expand it – until at least 2040.

Although we disagree with the rosy picture painted by the DEQ, we agree that North Carolina must transition to a clean energy economy as quickly as possible. Gov. Stein must support development of solar-plus-storage across the state beginning with public facilities critical during emergencies and require it on any new data centers.

###

Now in its 38th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to persuade or require Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest climate polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes. 

The post The Big Lie: State Claims Climate Pollution is Down — NC WARN News Release appeared first on NC WARN.

Newmont (NYSE: NEM)-backed developer Fuerte Metals (TSXV: FMT) says it would need barely a year at current gold prices to recoup the C$983 million initial capital costs of building the Coffee gold project in Yukon.

Based on a 5% discount rate and $3,620 per oz. gold price, a new preliminary economic assessment shows Coffee has an after-tax net present value (NPV) of $2.3 billion with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 47.8% and a payback period of 1.7 years, Fuerte said in a statement dated Sunday. At a spot gold price of $5,000, reflective of current levels, the NPV jumps to $4 billion with a 67% IRR and a payback period of 1.2 years.

Newmont, Canada’s Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX, NYSE: AEM) and former Franco Nevada (NYSE: FNV) CEO Pierre Lassonde are among the major investors backing Fuertes’s efforts to develop the central Yukon property that’s been around for about 15 years and is considered one of Canada’s 10 largest heap-leach projects. Some 40,000 metres of resource conversion and exploration drilling is planned this year ahead of a fourth-quarter feasibility study, while a construction decision is targeted for early 2027.

Fuerte acquired the 700-sq.-km Coffee from Newmont in October in a deal worth up to $150 million. Newmont now holds about 19% of the company, plus a 3% net smelter royalty, while Agnico’s stake is 8%. Fuerte will have the right to repurchase the NSR from Newmont for $100 million at any time up to one year after the announcement of commercial production.

White Gold

Coffee was discovered by Shawn Ryan, one of the more important prospectors in Canada over the past two decades. His work helped to open up the White Gold district in the Yukon, which later drew in majors like Newmont.

Fuerte’s PEA envisages a conventional, open-pit, heap-leach operation with a 13-year mine life, producing an average of 249,000 oz. of saleable gold annually over the first five full years and 217,000 oz. per year over life of mine at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,274 per ounce.

Tim Warman, Fuerte’s CEO, brings roughly three decades of experience across exploration, development and mine building, with a track record tied to several high-profile transactions.

He was previously CEO of Fiore Gold, which built and operated a Nevada gold mine before its roughly $151 million all-share sale to Calibre Mining in 2022, and earlier held senior roles with Aurelian Resources, part of the team behind the Fruta del Norte discovery that was sold to Kinross Gold for about $1.2 billion in 2008.

Access route

Capital costs for Coffee include C$71.3 million to build the so-called Northern Access Route, which will provide road access to the site from Dawson City.

When sustaining capital is included, Coffee’s estimated capital requirements rise to about C$1.72 billion. Annual average cash operating costs over the mine life are estimated at $1,136 per ounce. Coffee holds 80 million measured and indicated tonnes grading 1.15 grams gold per tonne for contained metal of 2.96 million oz., according to a 2025 resource. Inferred resources are pegged at 21.2 million tonnes grading 1.17 grams gold for 800,000 oz. of contained metal.

Early works could begin upon receipt of permits later this year, Fuerte said Sunday. Remaining mine licenses are expected by Dec. 31.

Fuerte shares rose 1.1% to C$9.05 Tuesday morning in Toronto, giving the company a market value of about C$1.1 billion ($800 million).

Nestled among the undulating hills of Galicia in northern Spain, where wild horses and cattle have grazed for centuries, Europe’s hopes for clean energy security lie buried deep beneath the ground – for now.

The Mina Doade lithium project is one of 23 extractive mining sites designated as “strategic” by Brussels under the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) to boost production of minerals vital for making solar panels, wind turbines and batteries for electric vehicles.

That designation means environmental permitting procedures will be streamlined, potentially fast-tracking Mina Doade’s final approval.

But the mining site lies just less than one kilometre from protected land, and the project’s sensitive location is fuelling opposition among conservation groups and local residents, who say it threatens rich biodiversity in the protected Atlantic wet heathlands and forest ecosystem as well as the area’s water supplies.

“They say lithium is strategic – but for us, water is,” said Ibán Losada, a young forestry worker, adding that the rolling grasslands around Mina Doade are home to threatened species such as the Iberian wolf and red kite.

Mina Doade’s owner, Recursos Minerales de Galicia, did not respond to several requests for comment. The project’s website emphasises a focus on limiting its environmental impact, saying it will minimise noise, dust and water consumption.

View of some of the protected Galician Atlantic meadows near the planned lithium mine in Doade, Spain (Photo: Helena Rodríguez Gómez) Víctor Gil, president of one of the groups of residents affected by the proposed Doade lithium mine in Spain, holds a map of the project’s mining permits (Photo: Helena Rodríguez Gómez) View of some of the protected Galician Atlantic meadows near the planned lithium mine in Doade, Spain (Photo: Helena Rodríguez Gómez) Víctor Gil, president of one of the groups of residents affected by the proposed Doade lithium mine in Spain, holds a map of the project’s mining permits (Photo: Helena Rodríguez Gómez) Clean energy vs biodiversity?

A Climate Home News investigation has found that Mina Doade is among 11 of the EU’s strategic mining projects that overlap land lying within one kilometre of Natura 2000 network of biodiversity-protected areas. 

Three more strategic mining projects – in Finland, Romania and central Spain – directly overlap Natura 2000 land, an analysis of geospatial data showed.

Buffer zones of one or two kilometres are often used in academic papers and technical documentation to consider potential environmental impacts beyond the borders of such protected sites, for example on groundwater.  

Beyond the strategic critical minerals projects announced last year, Climate Home’s reporting found that in a sample of three countries – Spain, Italy and Germany – 259 permits for the exploration or extraction of critical minerals partially overlap Natura 2000 sites, equivalent to 40% of the total number of permits recorded in national and regional land registries.

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While mining is not prohibited on or near Natura 2000 areas, environmental experts and campaigners say operating mines in such areas increases the risk of harm to wildlife habitats and water supplies.

In Finland’s northernmost Lapland region, in a remote area where Sámi communities still herd reindeer, Anglo American’s Sakatti project aims to start producing copper, cobalt and other critical minerals during the next decade, despite its location on Natura 2000 protected land.

The two other strategic projects which partially overlap Natura 2000 sites are a graphite project in Romania and a tungsten project in Spain, Climate Home’s investigation found. Graphite is used in lithium battery anodes, while tungsten is also used in batteries, as well as solar panels and wind turbines.

Asked to comment about Sakatti’s location, London-listed Anglo American said protecting the region’s unique biodiversity was “paramount”.

Most of the mine’s operations would take place underground to ensure a “minimal surface footprint”, and access to the mine would be from outside the protected area’s buffer zone, the company said in a statement.

It said it planned a series of environmental compensation measures agreed in partnership with local communities, including protecting habitat and restoring degraded wetlands in the area, as well as the voluntary purchase of 2,910 hectares of forest land elsewhere.

Sakatti has not yet been given the green light, and Finland’s state-owned land administrator Metsähallitus told Climate Home News the project’s Natura 2000 assessment did not eliminate uncertainties about its potential impact on groundwater in the Viiankiaapa mire reserve that it partially overlaps.

Environmental balancing act

The findings of Climate Home’s investigation highlight the environmental balancing act faced by Europe as it seeks to shore up its clean energy security by boosting domestic production of metals such as lithium, nickel, copper and cobalt – all vital for the bloc’s clean energy industries.

Under the CRMA, the EU aims to mine 10% of its annual critical raw materials needs domestically by 2030 to reduce its dependence on China by fast-tracking the approval of extractive projects designated as strategic, such as Mina Doade. At the moment, the EU produces about 3% of the critical minerals it needs. 

• Feb 5, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Green groups sue EU over inclusion of Portuguese lithium mine on priority list Campaigners argue that the Barroso lithium mine poses serious environmental risks and should be removed from the EU’s list of “strategic” mineral projects Read more
• Dec 10, 2025 Clean Energy Frontier EU weakening of corporate sustainability rules ‘jeopardises’ climate action, critics say A major revision to the EU’s law on corporate due diligence removes a requirement for large companies to publish plans to align their business model with global climate goals Read more
• Nov 28, 2025 Clean Energy Frontier EU refuses to review “strategic” mineral projects for energy transition Brussels says requests by NGOs to reassess the “strategic” designation of new mining projects because of environmental concerns are “unfounded” Read more

But the goal for increased domestic production puts further pressure on Europe’s Natura 2000 network, which covers 18% of the bloc’s total land area and is a pillar of the EU’s pledge to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and restore all degraded ecosystems in need of recovery by the middle of the century.

“In the name of seemingly climate goals, energy transition, and also obviously military goals, we’re cutting very essential environmental standards that not only protect nature, but also people,” said Cléo Moreno, legal counsel on EU environmental law at ClientEarth, an NGO.

Growing global concern over mining surge

Beyond Europe, too, concern is growing over how to ensure the switch away from fossil fuels does not exacerbate environmental damage from mining.

According to 2024 research by S&P Global Sustainable, 71% of global transition-mineral mines are located in ecologically sensitive areas.

But advocates of efforts to boost European mining say the bloc’s stringent environmental safeguards mean damage can be limited, averting mining disasters more common in other mineral-rich countries in Africa and Latin America.

Where mining has led to environmental impacts, “remediation measures should be implemented” over mine closure… “otherwise we risk importing (minerals) from distant regions where transparency, labour conditions, and environmental safeguards are uncertain,” said Ester Boixareu, a specialist on energy transition minerals at Spain’s Geological and Mining Institute (IGME-CSIC), a state body.

Some environmental campaigners warn, however, that this logic could make European countries complacent about the potential damage from ramping up critical minerals output.

“The EU is in the process of lowering those same environmental standards it prides itself on having,” said Ilze Tralmaka, a law and policy advisor on environmental democracy at ClientEarth, pointing to the fast-tracking of approvals for the “strategic” projects.

Bypassing safeguards?

Being designated as strategic means that while projects must still comply with member states’ environmental laws, they are eligible for faster approval through streamlined bureaucracy and can more easily access EU-backed capital.

Critics of the CRMA fear it could pressure national and local authorities to approve mining projects, despite environmental risks.

Classifying certain projects as strategic “is an attempt to bypass the safeguards normally required under the Nature directives”, said Gabriel Schwaderer, executive director of EuroNatur, a nature conservation foundation based in Germany.

The EU’s Habitats (92/43/EEC) and Birds (2009/147/EC) directives are the cornerstone of the Natura 2000 network, contributing to EU and global biodiversity goals by improving coverage and protection of threatened species and habitats, reducing land-use pressures inside protected areas compared with surrounding land. 

A sign to Vulcan Energy’s Lionheart project in Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley, where the company wants to extract lithium from geothermal brine and generating renewable heat and power at the same time.(Photo: Filipp Smirnov)

In Germany, Michael Reckordt of Berlin-based NGO PowerShift warned that the pressure to approve projects more quickly comes at a time when staffing levels are being reduced across federal departments, including environmental agencies.

“With the CRMA, the aim is to give a permit or get a licence within 27 months, and on the other hand … highly intensive projects are now reviewed by fewer people,” Reckordt said.

Asked to comment on the risks of developing critical raw materials projects on or near Natura 2000 areas, the Commission’s directorates-general for environment and for internal market and industry said member states were responsible for permitting, monitoring and carrying out environmental assessments.

They said that while the Commission provides detailed guidance on assessing risks to Natura 2000 sites, “there are no specific thresholds set in the EU nature legislation in relation to the significance of negative impacts” because “such assessment has to be done on a case-by-case basis”.

It can step in if a country clearly fails to apply EU law, for example by launching infringement procedures, their statement said.

The EU Court of Justice has repeatedly ruled against member states for inadequate environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and for permitting the degradation of protected sites.

Recycling and lithium waste recovery

Industry advocates say mining can be compatible with environmental protection if the right controls are put in place and properly implemented.

“In many contexts, the real challenges lie in enforcement capacity, institutional capability, and the cultural shifts required to implement policies effectively,” said Gemma James, a spokesperson for nature and biodiversity at the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, an investor-led initiative.

“We have seen examples where nature-related risks have stopped production. Therefore, investors need to promote effective management in relation to nature (and) need to set common expectations, reduce inconsistencies, and help avoid a ‘race to the bottom’,” James said.

At the same time, “a level playing field” is needed globally to ensure that companies obey the same rules regarding operating in protected areas. 

Mining advocates also point to the potential of emerging technologies to make Europe’s green transition less destructive, from recovering lithium from mine water to urban mining and large-scale e-waste recycling. 

But such solutions remain underdeveloped, and environmentalists say mining has no place on, or near, protected land, instead suggesting Europe’s policymakers turn their attention to reducing demand for critical minerals.

• Feb 5, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier ‘America needs you’: US seeks trade alliance to break China’s critical mineral dominance   The US has signed nearly a dozen mineral deals with countries as it called for the creation of a trading bloc to diversify supply chains away from China Read more
• Feb 17, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Argentina’s pioneering glacier law on the line as Milei bets on copper rush President Javier Milei wants Congress to relax groundbreaking glacier protection legislation to boost mining, but opponents say the environmental risks are too great Read more
• Feb 9, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier China maximises battery recycling to shore up critical mineral supplies Beijing is bracing for a tsunami of spent EV batteries by taking steps to boost recycling – a strategy that could also cut its reliance on imports of clean energy minerals Read more

“Recycling, substituting or increasing material efficiency should represent a priority at all times,” said Anne Larigauderie, biologist and former executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent international body.

An alliance of NGOs has formed the EU Raw Materials Coalition, calling for measures that would ease demand for critical minerals, such as reducing car and battery sizes, promoting car sharing and public transport, and pursuing policies to curb overall consumption. 

Confronted with the conflicting demands of industry and anti-mining campaigners, policymakers face a difficult task, said Julio César Arranz, a senior geologist at Spain’s Geological and Mining Institute (IGME), a state body.

“To what extent does declaring an area protected imply a categorical ‘no’ to mining?” he said. “Those in favour of mining argue that if done carefully, it can be done anywhere. Environmentalists, on the other hand, contend that there are places where nothing should ever be permitted.

“Those of us in the administration often find ourselves somewhere in between.”

This investigation was supported by Free Press Unlimited’s Collaborative and Investigative Journalism Initiative (CIJI) grant programme.

Main image: The Vedra Valley in Lombardy, Italy, where a zinc mining project is being developed, is located inside a Natura 2000 site

The post Rush for critical minerals tests Europe’s resolve to protect nature appeared first on Climate Home News.

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text-align: center !important } .bee-row-17 .bee-col-1 .bee-block-1 .bee-button-content, .bee-row-19 .bee-col-1 .bee-block-2 .bee-button-content, .bee-row-9 .bee-col-1 .bee-block-4 .bee-button-content { width: 100% !important; text-align: center !important } } Council Wins:
Solar Project to Reclaim 2,000 Acres of Toxic Mineland

“Approval of the Black Moshannon Solar project is a victory for the people of Rush Township, a victory for clean energy, and a victory for a sustainable economy,” stated Tom Pike, Clean Air Council Director of Campaigns. “This is the kind of forward-thinking work that communities across the Commonwealth should be looking to replicate.”

Learn more FROM THE BLOG Clean Air Council Appeals Air Pollution Permit for Nation’s Largest Proposed Fracked Gas Power Plant

The Homer City Redevelopment project would be the nation’s largest fracked gas power plant to open in Pennsylvania. This plant is being built to power a 3,200-acre AI data center campus, even though a plant this size could produce enough electricity to power over three million PA homes. The Notice of Appeal was filed with the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board challenging errors in the plan approval.

Read the Full Story Feet First Philly Awards 16 Public Space Enhancement Projects to Improve Communities Across Philadelphia

After receiving over 70 applications for the Public Space Enhancement Program, a selection committee selected the 16 projects to be awarded funding to improve walkability in neighborhoods across Philadelphia. All of the funded organizations and their projects are located in communities that have experienced a lack of historical investment, or even active disinvestment in their public spaces. 

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Help Us Fight MEMBER Q&A Clean Air Council is so effective because our staff is a team of experts in their field and our members are so passionate about the environment. We wanted to share the expertise of our team by inviting members to ask about environmental issues they care about most. Below are just a few of the questions we received from dedicated members, like you. 

Q: Does Clean Air Council do local air monitoring and do you have any takeaways from the Purple Air data? – Alex S, member since 2026 and Eunice A, member since 1988

A: Yes, the Council operates a network of around 60 PurpleAir brand particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) monitors in the Philadelphia region. You can view the entire network at here. We saw higher air pollution readings than local governmental monitors at times, due to capturing hyperlocal air pollution events. The data is clearly demonstrating that more local air monitoring is needed to keep communities safe from pollution.
 – Russell Zerbo, Clean Air Council Advocate since 2012

Q: With the IRA gutted, what other resources are available to help residents wanting to switch to renewable options or Electric Vehicles? – Molly W, member since 2023

A: At the state level, all large electric utility companies offer energy efficient rebate and incentive programs under Pennsylvania’s flagship energy efficiency law, Act 129. These programs differ, but PECO, for example, offers a rebate for installing rooftop solar. Electric utility companies may pay customers with solar panels for the excess electricity generated (known as “net metering”) but check with your utility company to see what’s available to you.
– Alice Lu, Clean Air Council Policy Analyst since 2023

Q: Are there ways that we can, by negotiations, force the data centers to use renewable energy / help communities develop renewable energy? – Ann J, member since 2026

A: Data centers are being proposed at lightning speed, but we’re working with state lawmakers to prioritize bills that offer protections for residents and the environment. Local governments can also adopt zoning ordinances, which determine how land is used. Data center ordinances can spell out water usage standards, noise limits, setback requirements, and requirements for energy usage.
– Alice Lu, Clean Air Council Policy Analyst since 2023

Q: What is the current status of the role of the PM2.5 particles released into the air by burning organic substances? – Merv K, member and volunteer since 2008

A: In a regulatory sense, almost all counties in PA meet the 2012 National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM2.5. In 2024, the EPA finalized a stricter standard based on rigorously vetted health data, however, the current administration asked the court to revert back to the old standard. It also failed to identify which areas do not meet the new standard, a necessary step to trigger air quality improvement measures. Clean Air Council and other groups are fighting to ensure that EPA retains and enforces the new standard. Specific regulations regarding burning organic waste are usually local.
 – Nathan Johnson, Clean Air Council Engineer since 2017

Q: How can we streamline the permitting process for solar energy in PA to make it the cheapest, fastest, cleanest way to generate electricity? – Madeline D, member since 2023

A: There are several permitting barriers for large-scale solar in PA. For one, the interconnection authority PJM needs to expedite and solve its ‘queue’ approach that delays every solar project 5-7 years. The legislature also needs to create a centralized siting standard for solar farms because local zoning ordinances often take the form of de facto bans on solar. Finally, solar developers could do a better job of working with residents to offer comprehensive community benefits and reduce local opposition.
 – Tom Pike, Clean Air Council Director of Campaigns since 2025

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US leads record global surge in gas-fired power driven by AI demands, with big costs for the climate

“The coal plant was an environmental monstrosity, but it was a pillar of the local economy and some people are nostalgic for that,” said Clean Air Council Director of Campaigns Tom Pike, and continued with “But no one wants to live next to a datacenter. 

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Popular movements of more than 70 countries discuss proposals that will be brought to the International Conference on Agrarian Reform that will be held in Cartagena, Colombia, from this Tuesday, the 24th.

The post Forum of popular movements precedes international conference on land reform in Colombia | ICARRD+20 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.