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Nearly two decades after 350.org was founded, one of the most common questions we still get is “what does your name mean?” Well, it’s less complicated than you’d think.

350.org stands for 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is considered the safe amount to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

We need our atmosphere to contain less than 350 ppm of CO2, but it currently contains around 430 (you can learn more about science here and check the daily CO2 levels here). Our fight is to keep fossil fuels in the ground in order to return as fast as possible to that safe level.

So our name, 350.org, is a compass to bring us back to safety and an homage to the science that guides us. But it is much more than a number. It’s also a reminder of where our home is, and who’s with us in this journey.

Here’s a video we made way back in 2008, which captures this concept:

The post Do you know what’s in a name? appeared first on 350.

By the time Virginia Casper reached her 75th birthday, she’d almost given up trying to move her retirement savings out of fossil fuels. She had been shocked to learn that TIAA (the Teachers Retirement and Annuity Association), which she had always considered a socially responsible company, had at least $78 billion in coal, oil, and gas. Even their “Social Choice” and “ESG” funds were funneling her money into fossil fuel giants like ConocoPhillips and Halliburton.

TIAA is not alone. Although 75% of workers want sustainable retirement options, all of the major retirement providers — including Vanguard, Blackrock, and Fidelity — are still shoveling our money into fossil fuels.

Even from a purely financial perspective, this doesn’t make sense. Big Oil stocks are highly volatile. And apart from a couple of big spikes caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. attacks on Iran — thanks, unnecessary wars! — the fossil fuel companies have in fact underperformed the market for over a decade. As global demand for cheap renewable energy surges, the long-term outlook for the industry is gloomy.

Richard Butz, a retired college instructor in Vermont, thought that moving his money from TIAA to fossil-free investments would be costly, but he and his wife were surprised to find they kept getting better returns than their peers.

“Not only have our accounts done well, during several recessions since beginning this path, we did not lose significant value as was the experience of many of our friends,” he said. “We’ve found that socially responsible accounts are much safer than others during financial shocks.”

Butz is not alone. Researchers have repeatedly concluded that fossil-free funds are doing just fine.

Both Virginia and Richard explained their frustrations to TIAA-Divest, a nonprofit group I volunteer with that has been pressuring the company to get clients’ savings out of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Founded in 2020, TIAA-Divest has gathered support from thousands of employees and retirees who want more sustainable investment options. In 2022 TIAA-Divest — along with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) — filed a formal complaint with the United Nations-backed Principles of Responsible Investment, laying out the evidence that TIAA was deceiving its participants and violating all of the PRI’s core principles. The only result was that the company removed some of its worst greenwashing claims, but to date, it hasn’t budged on fossil fuels.

TIAA-Divest is not the only organization pressuring retirement companies toward greener investments. Never Vanguard and Blackrock’s Big Problem have also been mobilizing groups of angry clients.

So why are all the major retirement plans still piling our money into a dangerous and dying industry? Surprisingly, the devil is in one specific detail.

To manage risk, every retirement plan has a legal obligation to diversify your portfolio. That is, your savings must be spread across different kinds of investments: high risk stocks, low risk bonds, large and small companies, geographical spread, and different sectors of the economy.

In principle, this makes perfect sense. If the AI bubble bursts, you’ll be glad your retirement isn’t all in tech stocks.

But when it comes to diversification, Big Oil gets a quiet helping hand. Most financial companies rely on the GICS, or Global Industry Classification Standard. This system categorizes every stock in the world according to the primary business activity of the company. Providing a universal nomenclature allows investors to track trends and compare the performance of millions of stocks around the world.

Like the taxonomy you learned in biology class, where large kingdoms contain smaller groups like families and species, the GICS assigns a company to one of 11 large sectors, which are then further subdivided into industry groups, industries, and subindustries. The 11 large sectors are Consumer Staples, Consumer Discretionary, Information Technology, Financials, Health Care, Communication Services, Industrials, Utilities, Materials, Real Estate, and Energy.

If you look up Vanguard’s Employee Benefit Index Fund, you’ll see the careful breakdown of its investments across all 11 sectors. That’s how Vanguard proves that your retirement portfolio is successfully diversified.

But if you look closely, you’ll discover that the GICS stacks the deck in favor of fossil fuels. The “energy” category comprises “oil and gas and coal and consumable fuels” and “companies that offer oil and gas equipment and services.”

In other words, “energy” means fossil fuels (with a few biofuels thrown in). You won’t find renewable energy here. It’s scattered across GICS sectors. Wind turbine companies usually get classified under “industrials,” and solar under “utilities.”

On the surface, your retirement provider seems to be protecting your future by ensuring that you don’t miss out on the energy market. But what it’s really doing is forcing you to sink your savings into climate catastrophe.

Happily, there are fossil-free alternatives. After years of pressuring TIAA to get its clients out of oil, gas, and coal to little result, TIAA-Divest has decided to help people to express their rage by moving their money to more responsible investors.

Knowing that, however, is only the first step. Virginia says, “It feels daunting to think about moving your life savings. And there weren’t supports in place to help me think about the what and the how of doing it.” She was overwhelmed by all the technical terminology, and she worried that she might lose most of her savings.

Eventually, doing research alongside TIAA-Divest volunteers, Virginia found she didn’t need to become an authority on the stock market to move her money. And while it’s true that she won’t be profiting from the latest war, she’s no longer worried about losing her shirt.

Here’s what ordinary people like Virginia need to know.

If you’re already retired, you can shift your retirement savings to a more responsible alternative right now. There’s no penalty for moving the money, and a direct transfer to another retirement account keeps the entire process tax-free. The only exceptions are annuities, which you may not be able to move. (Each annuity contract is specific, and it’s best to ask an investment advisor to make sense of your options.)

If you’re still working and locked into an employer-sponsored plan, it’s complicated — but not impossible — to move your money. Here are three ways to do it:

• • You may roll over money from any retirement account you have from a previous employer into a new fund.
  • Your employer may match your monthly retirement contribution up to a certain amount, and that’s great. But lots of people make additional contributions every month — beyond the match rate. That money is yours, and you can decide to invest it in fossil-free funds.
  • About half of all retirement plans include a self-directed brokerage option, often called a brokerage window, which offers a wide range of investments. If your plan offers one, you can usually move your existing balances to fossil-free funds within that window, while staying within your employer’s plan.

Finding the right investment mix for your specific goals and values is the next hurdle. If you want to retire early and you don’t want any of your savings in nuclear power, you’ll have a different set of priorities from your neighbor, who wants to keep working and doesn’t have strong feelings about nuclear energy.

The best option if you already have a decent nest egg is to hire a financial advisor knowledgeable about socially responsible investing. These experts will help you to articulate your priorities, make financial projections, and help you with the nuts and bolts of moving your accounts. Most financial advisors set minimums — $100,000 or $500,000 for a household, for example — though there are some that will invest as little as $5,000 in fossil-free options for you. Advisors typically charge you a percentage of your savings annually. There are a few advisors who charge a flat fee by the hour, no matter how much money you have to invest. Harry Moran, founder of Sustainable Wealth Advisors, who recently spoke with TIAA-Divest, urges prospective clients to choose an advisor who is a fiduciary — that is, legally obligated to avoid conflicts of interest. That means they won’t earn commissions on the funds they recommend to you.

If hiring a financial advisor is out of your reach, you can still make informed choices. Start by opening up Fossil Free Funds, a free and well-respected resource regularly updated by the nonprofit organization As You Sow that grades mutual funds and ETFs by their exposure to fossil fuels. The front page allows you to click on “top-rated funds” to see a list of carefully vetted alternatives. Here you can learn how much each fund invests not only in fossil fuels but also in deforestation, guns, weapons, prisons, and gender equality.

To make sure that your portfolio is diversified enough to protect you against big shocks to the market, search for “balanced” funds, which combine stocks and bonds. (Bonds won’t offer you huge returns, but they will protect you from major market downturns. The standard combination is 60% stocks and 40% bonds.) Once you’ve found a few options you like, you can compare their rates of return by typing the fund names into Fidelity’s “Mutual Funds Research” page or Vanguard’s “Compare ETFS and Mutual Funds” page, which can tell you how well each fund has performed over one, five, and 10 years. The past is no guarantee of future returns, but comparing the fossil-fuel options to your existing accounts will give you a rough sense of how much you stand to lose — or gain — by making the switch.

Virginia successfully moved her retirement savings, except her annuities, to fossil-free investments this year. She’s relieved to have moved her own money, but she still worries about not only her own children and grandchildren, but “all generations to come, especially the most vulnerable among us.” She hopes more people will join the growing chorus of people raising their voices against fossil fuels in retirement portfolios.

Moving our money is one way to show that we really mean it.

And if enough of us do that, the system might also move — for example, by updating the GISC codes, which were last revised in 2023 to reflect major changes in the real estate, retail, and transportation industries.

After all, the energy industry is changing with the times. It’s time for the investment field to catch up.

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The post Why It’s Hard to Invest Your Retirement Sustainably — and How You Can Overcome the Obstacles appeared first on The Revelator.

In May, a group of fishers on the Indonesian island of Biak were dismantling an unexploded shell left over from World War II when the device went off, reportedly killing seven people and injuring 19 others. Officials have concluded that the fishers were harvesting materials from the shell for use in blast fishing.  

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When the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) movement was founded in 2016, Taller Ecologista had already been challenging the production and consumption model that turns plastic into a global problem for years. It is therefore no surprise that the Argentine organization was one of the movement’s founding members and that, 10 years later, it remains one of the most active voices in Latin America.

For Cecilia Bianco, coordinator of Taller Ecologista’s Toxics Program, the organization’s history demonstrates that the fight against plastic pollution has never been solely about waste. “Our mission is to protect the environment by ensuring that we have sustainable cities. We know that plastic has impacts throughout its entire life cycle, and in cities, what we see most is the waste aspect, but the problem begins much earlier”.

Founded in 1985, Taller Ecologista currently works in the areas of energy sovereignty, wetlands and water for life, socio-environmental education, food sovereignty, zero waste, and toxic substances. Although its areas of focus are diverse, there is a common principle: understanding that nature functions as an interconnected system. “That is one of the great lessons,” explains Bianco. “We have different areas of focus, but we know that nature isn’t fragmented like our organizations are”.

Changing the Conversation About Plastic

For many years, the dominant narrative held consumers almost exclusively responsible for plastic pollution. Sorting waste, recycling, and disposing of trash properly seemed to be sufficient solutions.

For Taller Ecologista, joining BFFP meant finding an international community that was asking exactly the same question they were: Who is really responsible for this crisis? “What drew us in was understanding that the cause wasn’t strictly the consumer’s responsibility. It was always said that the consumer was to blame. Today, it’s very clear that those who produce that packaging and those who market these products bear enormous responsibility”.

That shift in focus has shaped much of the organization’s work over the past decade. Brand audits—one of the tools promoted globally by BFFP—made it possible to systematically identify which companies are responsible for the plastic waste found on beaches, in rivers, and in public spaces. Taller Ecologista was one of the first organizations in the region to implement this methodology, and 10 years later, it continues to lead the way in Argentina.

Bianco recalls that the impact grew over time. “At first, it was very difficult to get the media’s attention. Today, there is significant interest in the results.” But the true value of these audits lies not solely in producing data. “BFFP’s greatest contribution was demonstrating that the problem lies not only in waste management, but also in how the product is designed and in the decisions made by those who bring it to market”.

From Diagnosis to Solutions

Beyond highlighting the problem, Taller Ecologista has spent years developing concrete alternatives to reduce single-use plastics. In Rosario, it championed proposals that are now part of public policy, such as replacing disposable tableware with porcelain or metal at the City Council. It also promoted “Zero Waste” ordinances in various cities across the province of Santa Fe and has participated in drafting regulatory proposals to eliminate disposable straws.

At the same time, the organization develops community initiatives that seek to demonstrate that other consumption models are possible. Among these is the reusable cup bank for social organizations, which prevents the use of thousands of disposable cups during events; “Frascos vienen y van” (Jars Come and Go), a project that recycles glass containers for reuse by solidarity economy enterprises; and the promotion of bulk sales and refill systems that reduce packaging waste. “Thanks to the awareness-raising efforts of Taller Ecologista, more businesses have joined the initiative. More and more people are bringing their own containers, and that helps spread these practices”.

The organization also works to highlight the link between plastic pollution and the petrochemical industry. Its technical expertise has even led it to advise Argentina’s Environmental Prosecutor’s Office on investigations related to the impacts of fracking within the petrochemical industry. “We’re able to access these opportunities thanks to our networking,” says Bianco. “We never work alone”.

Producing Plastic While Trying to Reduce It

Argentina not only consumes plastic but also produces the raw materials needed to manufacture it. “We are a country that produces plastic, plastic precursors, and raw materials. There is also a very powerful industry, linked to Brazil, that has enormous economic clout,” explains Bianco.

That economic power is also reflected in the difficulty of passing regulations. Bianco cites as an example the repeated failed attempts to pass a national packaging law and points out that behind every proposal to reduce single-use plastics, there is usually strong resistance from the industry.

That is why he believes change cannot depend solely on individual decisions. “People often ask how to use less plastic, and there isn’t always a simple answer. We need changes at much higher levels. That’s why the Global Plastics Treaty is so important,” she adds.

Beyond Recycling

One of the messages Taller Ecologista has been promoting is to debunk the idea that recycling, on its own, will solve the crisis. Bianco argues that for decades, the industry has used recycling to shift responsibility onto the public.

Although she acknowledges that recycling plays an important role, she warns that the reality is much more limited than is usually communicated. “Those who work in material recovery know that a significant portion of plastics simply has no market,” she adds.

Furthermore, she explains that many plastics contain mixtures of toxic chemicals that remain present even after recycling. “The key is to be transparent about what plastics contain. We’re not just talking about a polymer; there are also numerous chemical additives whose presence we’re often unaware of”.

The Power of a Global Network

After a decade with BFFP, Bianco is clear about what he considers one of the movement’s greatest achievements: building an international community capable of sharing evidence, lessons learned, and strategies to address a common problem. “We feel a strong sense of solidarity with organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. We share very similar economic and political realities, and many solutions that work in one country can be adapted to another,” she says.

But the network’s reach extends beyond the region. Participating in BFFP means understanding that a piece of packaging found in an Argentine river can be part of a global pattern of production and consumption. “It’s a global perspective. There are products that may not directly affect us, but we know they’re having enormous impacts in other parts of the world, and we collaborate because we understand that the problem is shared,” she explains.

This coordination also strengthens organizations when they face disinformation campaigns or political setbacks. “When you’re feeling discouraged, another organization that’s made progress always comes along. So you celebrate that success and keep moving forward”.

A treaty to transform the system

For Taller Ecologista, the Global Plastics Treaty represents a historic opportunity to change the rules of the game. Bianco acknowledges that the negotiations will be long and complex, especially in a geopolitical context marked by international tensions. However, she believes the process is already bringing about significant changes.

“I always say that the treaty is the path. That path is full of opportunities to highlight the damage caused by plastic, to demonstrate that recycling, as it exists today, isn’t enough, and to discuss how products are designed,” she says.

As more scientific evidence accumulates, she explains, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the industry’s traditional narratives. “BFFP has become a massive international platform for disseminating scientific information on the impacts of plastics. That information is now unstoppable”.

Building a Movement

Organizations like Taller Ecologista show that the most profound transformations do not occur solely in international negotiation forums. They are also built in cities, through local ordinances, brand audits, businesses that adopt refill systems, people who reuse containers, and, above all, through alliances that cross borders.

When asked what she would say to someone who wants to get involved in the fight against plastic pollution, Bianco doesn’t start by talking about campaigns or technical knowledge. She talks about collective work. “You have to be patient, stay informed, and be flexible. But above all, you have to work as a team, with other organizations. That’s essential,” she says. And before ending the conversation, he offers one final reflection that sums up both Taller Ecologista’s experience and the spirit of BFFP: “Working with organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean is wonderful. It’s truly exciting.”

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China has released its “15th five-year plan for the development of renewable energy”, outlining key targets and policies for the sector in 2026-2030.

A key focus of the plan is boosting renewable generation and consumption as a share of China’s overall energy mix.

It calls for continued capacity additions of wind and solar – albeit at lower levels than previous years – as well as hydropower, biomass and other clean-energy sources.

Specifically, China will aim to install 3,500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2030,  2,800GW will be wind and solar. 

The country had previously pledged to install 1,200GW of wind and solar by 2030, a goal that China met six years early.

Another major theme is the provision of wind and solar supply that is “dependable” and “grid-friendly”.

Setting a target for “firm capacity” from wind and solar could help to entrench their role as a provider of “energy security”, according to analysts.

The government also aims to boost renewables consumption by developing non-power uses of renewable energy, in sectors such as steel and chemicals.

Below, Carbon Brief examines the key targets and policies outlined in the five-year plan and what they mean for China’s energy transition.

• Why are China’s five-year plans important?
• What overarching renewables targets are in the plan?
• Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?
• What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?
• What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?
• What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance?

Article Contents Expand menu

• Why are China’s five-year plans important?
• What overarching renewables targets are in the plan? 
• Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?
• What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?
• What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?
• What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance? 

Why are China’s five-year plans important?

Five-year plans are key to China’s political system. An overarching plan, covering all socioeconomic issues of importance to policy leaders, is published at the beginning of each five-year cycle. 

The plan for the 15th five-year period (2026-2030) was published in March 2026. 

It includes what the government considers to be the most important targets and policy signals for climate and energy. For example, binding targets for carbon intensity, the share of non-fossil energy in total energy consumption and total energy production capacity.

Following this overarching document, five-year plans focused on specific sectors or themes are then published over the course of the five-year plan period.

This year, the government has already published several five-year plans related to energy and climate change. One covers the development of the “new-type” energy sector more broadly. Another wraps climate goals together with other environmental targets under the “Beautiful China” programme.

By contrast, the renewables five-year plan focuses specifically on the development of hydropower, wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and wave energy.

It was published in late July by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration (NEA). 

It covers topics including capacity and generation targets, as well as efforts to increase integration and reliability of wind and solar. It also has policies to encourage “non-power use” of renewable energy and ways to strengthen innovation of clean-energy technologies.

What overarching renewables targets are in the plan? 

China will aim to install 3,500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables capacity by 2030, according to the five-year plan.

Of this, 2,800GW will be wind and solar – a pledge reiterated from China’s action plan for peaking carbon emissions, which was released earlier this month. 

The goal more than doubles a previous 2030 target for wind and solar to reach 1,200GW, which China met six years early.

As of June 2026, the country has installed just under 2,000GW of wind and solar capacity, as well as 454GW of hydropower. Biomass, geothermal and wave energy hold very small shares of the overall energy mix. 

As such, China would need to build 160GW of wind and solar each year – and just under 220GW of renewable capacity in total – to meet the targets.

The country installed 277GW of new solar alone in 2024 – and 315GW in 2025. 

China’s total installed capacity of renewable energy from 2016-2025, and its target for 2030. Source: National Energy Administration, Carbon Brief.

A key part of meeting the targets will be the development of large-scale clean-energy bases in China’s northern regions. These will generate power to be exported elsewhere via ultra-high voltage lines. The plan also encourages greater “local consumption” and installations of distributed energy (see below).

The plan says that further research will be directed at increasing the renewable share of electricity generated by these large-scale energy bases to 100%.

A recent report by the thinktank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) finds that output from these bases “continues to be paired with coal-fired generation in the name of balancing and system flexibility”. It says that currently, coal generates 42% of the power transmitted to the rest of the country from these bases.

China will also add more hydropower, says the plan, with capacity rising from 448GW in 2025 to 570GW in 2030. Some 160GW of this will be pumped-storage hydropower.

Meanwhile, the plan sets a target for renewable power generation to reach 6,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), 4,000TWh of which would come from wind and solar. 

This would be a 50% increase in five years as renewables generated just under 4,000TWh of electricity in 2025, according to the National Energy Administration.

By 2030, the plan says that total consumption of renewable energy will stand at 1.8bn tonnes of coal equivalent (Gtce).

This would be up from 1.2Gtce in 2025, which represented about one-fifth of China’s total energy consumption of 6.2Gtce that year.

The renewable targets in the plan are lower than those suggested in a recent study by high-profile Chinese scholars.

The study, from the department of energy and power engineering and the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University in Beijing, assessed the “likelihood of China attaining its carbon peak” under different pathways.

It found that, in order to meet its climate commitments, China would need to either install more than 4,000GW of “non-fossil energy capacity” before 2030, or to “maintain a total energy consumption” below 6.5Gtce.

The table below outlines some of the key renewables targets for 2030, as specified in the plan.

Key targets for 2030, adapted from 15th five-year plan for renewable energy  Type20252030Percentage changeRenewable energy use 1.2Gtce1.8Gtce53%Total renewables capacity2,340GW3,500GW50%Wind and solar capacity1,840GWMore than 2,800GW52%Of which: Solar thermal1.8GW15GW733%Hydro capacity450GW570GW27%Of which: Pumped storage hydropower66GW160GW142%Wave energy–0.4GW–Renewable generation4,000TWh6,000TWh50%Of which: Wind and solar2,300TWh4,000TWh74%Non-electricity use60Mtce150Mtce150%Renewable hydrogen0.25Mt2Mt700% Why does the plan focus on ‘firm capacity’ for renewables?

As well as increasing the overall size of China’s renewable power supply, the country must also maintain an “uninterrupted and reliable power supply”, officials from the NDRC and NEA told state news agency Xinhua in coverage of the new plan.

To support this goal, the plan says that the development of renewables will “enter a new stage”. This will mean that “improving quality and serving as a reliable alternative” to fossil fuels will be as important as “expanding scale”.

The plan, therefore, proposes targets for the “firm capacity” from wind and solar (置信出力). This is the amount plants or grids can be relied on to produce during critical supply periods, in conjunction with on-site storage.

The target for wind is a firm capacity of at least 11% of total installed capacity by 2030, while the equivalent goal for solar is 6%. 

Wind and solar will also be expected to supply more than 20% of total demand in peak periods during the summer and winter evenings, says the plan. It expects “reliable peak-shaving capacity from renewable sources” to reach more than 300GW.

The new targets are a “positive move”, says Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, as it “only applies during peak load and critical supply periods, when coal power is typically used to stabilise the power supply”. 

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She adds that this could, theoretically, “prevent the construction of new coal-fired power projects that are proposed and approved for the reason of meeting peak demand”.

The new metrics mark a change in focus, says Lyu Wenbin, director general of the Energy Research Institute – a state thinktank under the NDRC – in an “explanatory reading” posted on BJX News. He says it “marks a shift in renewable energy development from the mere pursuit of installed capacity to…also taking into account system support capabilities”. 

The plan pledges to “accelerate the construction of grid-friendly wind and solar power stations”. It says this will enhance “reliable peak-load generation” and strengthen renewables’ ability to ensure “safe and stable operation” of the grid.

It says this will particularly be a focus in the energy-hungry east, central and south areas of China.

It sets out a slightly different focus for areas that already have a high share of renewables in their power mix, such as north-west China. Here, the aim will be to develop wind and solar parks that are “capable of providing voltage, frequency and inertia support”.

“This is a real challenge”, says James Norman, research analyst at GEM. He says these challenges are particularly acute in some circumstances:

“[For example], when the share of wind and solar is very high, relatively few synchronous generators (like coal) are online or large volumes of electricity are being transferred through high voltage DC lines.”

The plan mentions many technological solutions to address the problem, he tells Carbon Brief. However, he adds, there are no quantitative details for the issue. For example, he notes there is no target for “how many gigawatts of wind and solar must gain grid-forming capability”. This is in contrast to the goals for overall renewables capacity or generation.

Norman was a co-author on the recent GEM report, which identified further barriers to renewable uptake. It said these include transmission bottlenecks, alongside systemic features such as dispatching and power-contract mechanisms. 

As a result, said the report, renewable power – especially solar – is increasingly being “curtailed”, particularly in north-western and northern provinces.

Yao also notes that the plan does not “spell out specific measures to address systemic constraints” around the electricity grid and the role of coal in the power sector. 

“I interpret this as evidence that the vested interests are still strong in the policy debate,” she adds.

What does the plan say about ‘distributed’ energy?

Alongside gigawatt-scale clean-energy megabases, China also aims to expand construction of “distributed” energy. This means smaller-scale installations, such as rooftop solar.

More than 300GW of “distributed new energy” is to be added over 2026-30, some 60GW per year.

The plan aims for distributed new energy to be adopted in sectors such as industry, transport, buildings and agriculture. 

Applications include the use of distributed solar and wind in industrial parks, coal mines and oilfields, as well as encouraging residents to install solar panels on buildings and developing rural clean-energy grids.

In some regions, distributed solar and wind is “likely to meet a large proportion of local demand”, says Prof Pan Jiahua at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). He tells Carbon Brief that micro- and mini-grids using such resources will be particularly important in central and coastal China.

The 60GW annual target for new distributed energy is not “overly ambitious”, says Isadora Wang, head of China at the thinktank Transition Asia. She tells Carbon Brief that distributed solar additions, alone, exceeded 100GW in both 2024 and 2025.

Cosimo Ries, analyst at the consultancy Trivium China, agrees that the target is reachable. The biggest question mark, he tells Carbon Brief, is whether it will continue to make sense for industry and utilities to build distributed power at the volumes seen during the 14th five-year plan period. 

He adds that market conditions for distributed solar have deteriorated sharply over the past two years. He says a range of factors have hit investor confidence:

“[Distributed solar faces] growing exposure to market trading, worsening returns in spot markets, growing risks of curtailment and new policies limiting or forbidding the selling of power back to the grid.”

What does the plan say about non-electricity use of renewables?

The plan also sets goals for renewable energy’s role in “non-electricity use”.

This means using renewable energy for purposes other than generating electricity, through converting it to other forms, such as heat or mechanical energy.

The government is aiming for non-power use to nearly triple from 60m tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) in 2025 to 150Mtce in 2030. 

Ries tells Carbon Brief that he thinks this target is “one of the main highlights” of the plan. However, he notes that limited available data means it is hard to assess the level of its ambition. He adds that, given the relative conservatism of China’s other recent clean-energy targets, this one may also be met relatively easily.

Key applications for non-power use of renewables include “green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol”, says the plan. It also points to using wind and solar for heat, as well as to biomass and geothermal for heating and cooling. 

Green hydrogen, ammonia and methanol are the “centrepiece” of the non-power push, according to state-owned newspaper Economic Information Daily.

For hydrogen alone, China plans to scale up renewable hydrogen production to 2m tonnes in 2030, up from 250,000 tonnes in 2025.

Today, non-power use of renewables accounts for only around 1% of China’s total energy consumption, NEA and NDRC officials said in a Q&A. They added that there is “considerable room for growth” in sectors such as industry, transport and buildings.

Potential new applications include the use of wind and solar for heat. This could see the use of centralised wind and solar heating stations in the chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, papermaking and food sectors. 

New projects in the steel and cement sectors should use locally-generated wind and solar to power electric-arc furnaces and kilns, adds the plan.

Wang tells Carbon Brief that she believes the naming of individual sectors is a “clear indication” that they will be included in China’s renewable consumption quotas. These already cover aluminium and other heavy industry sectors.

She adds that power and heat demand from the named sectors may help absorb distributed renewable energy. It will also serve as a testing ground for matching demand with supply through increased grid flexibility and power price reforms.

To Ries, the growing focus on non-power use signals that China’s decarbonisation efforts are “now entering deeper waters”. That means regulators are turning from easier-to-abate sectors, such as aluminium, to more challenging industries, such as steel.

The plan could create a “second growth curve” for the new-energy industry, says He Zhao, in a commentary for China Power News Net. He, the vice-president of the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute (EPPEI). says this might begin with non-power use, before shifting to fuel, feedstock and heat substitution.

What does the plan say about China’s cleantech dominance? 

The next five years is a prime opportunity for China to “consolidate our leading position across the entire industrial chain” for clean-energy technologies, says the plan.

It adds that the government will “strengthen technological innovation” and accelerate the roll-out of new applications of artificial intelligence in China’s renewable-energy system. 

A particular focus for new R&D will be “cutting-edge, original and disruptive technologies”. It also points to technologies that “enhance the reliability of renewable energy” as a substitute for fossil fuels.

The plan names technologies for further development. For wind power, these include “reliable and low-cost” blades, ultra-tall towers and new types of floating platforms. It also mentions the development of “high-altitude wind power”. For solar, it points to the development of perovskite and other “high efficiency” solar cells, as well as space-solar technologies.

The plan also pledges to develop a power market that supports the “full entry” of renewable-energy companies. It underscores that companies should plan for an increasingly market-based and competitive environment.

Meanwhile, the government will also deepen cooperation with other countries on clean energy and “advance” global climate cooperation, it says.

A priority will be “strengthening” international coordination on investment and development in “green energy projects”. Another is “actively promoting the free circulation of China’s high-quality green technologies and products in global markets”.

Chinese exports of clean-energy technologies have been surging, especially since the closure of the strait of Hormuz. 

At the same time, Chinese investment in clean-energy projects in Belt and Road Initiative member states totalled $20bn in the first half of 2026. This is also driven by the crisis.

The US, EU and others have launched tariffs and pricing mechanisms to curb imports of Chinese cleantech. This has contributed to pushback from China, against what it and others refer to as “unilateral trade measures”. 

China is transitioning from a “major energy nation” (能源大国) to an “energy powerhouse” (能源强国), writes the Energy Research Institute’s Lyu in his explanatory reading. He says this will enable China to increasingly shift to building “systemic” advantages in developing clean-energy technologies.

He continues that, from 2026-2030, China will “move to the very forefront of the global stage” on clean energy, “venturing into uncharted territory”. This will create both “major new challenges and significant opportunities” for the country, he adds. 

Related Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? 06.08.2026 China policy Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’ 09.07.2026 China policy Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? 18.06.2026 China policy Analysis: Solar overtakes gas power in Asia for first time ever 12.06.2026 Oil and gas

The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ for renewables mean for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Giant sequoias are built to live with fire. Their thick, spongy bark shields the underlying wood from flames. The lower trunks are largely devoid of foliage, offering little fuel to help fires reach the canopy. Heat pops open their dense cones, releasing seeds for the next generation.

But today’s fires, supercharged by climate change and underbrush left by decades of fire suppression, are too much even for these long-lived behemoths. In 2020 and 2021 wildfires in western California raged through sequoia groves, killing thousands of the trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

In the aftermath scientists are learning that the most effective way to help save these trees is to fight fire with fire. In places within the parks where land managers had reduced underbrush by intentionally setting low-intensity fires, sequoias were 77% less likely to die, according to new research in Nature Communications.

 “Prescribed burns are effective at reducing giant sequoia mortality, even for today’s extreme wildfires,” said lead author Dan Dixon, who was a University of California Davis postdoctoral researcher when the study was conducted. “If the goal is protecting giant sequoias, prescribed fire is an essential tool.”

Prescribed fires have long been considered a critical—if underutilized—strategy for turning down the temperature in today’s era of megafires. The aim is to return fire-adapted forests to something closer to the conditions in which many of them evolved, when fires often acted more like cleansers than destroyers.

Triggered by lightning or Indigenous peoples, flames would regularly burn through forest understories, turning bushes and fallen trees to ash while leaving big, healthy trees relatively unscathed. Rarely, it’s thought, did they spawn the canopy-destroying firestorms of recent years, fueled by dense undergrowth left from a century of aggressive fire suppression.

Despite the reported benefits of prescribed fire, the effect at a very detailed level, such as the fate of an individual tree species, hadn’t been clearly demonstrated. Then, the Castle (2020) and KNP Complex (2021) fires happened. Over two years, these fires burned more than 1,000 square kilometers of forest in California’s Sierra Nevadas. That included some of the last remaining groves of the giant sequoia, a species found only in that region. The largest tree species on Earth, they can live more than 3,000 years and grow to the mass of 15 blue whales. In those two years, as many as 13,000 sequoias are thought to have perished.

 

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“These trees live for so long and have experienced so much variability of climate, differences in wildfire, drought—they’ve seen it all,” Dixon said. “Having so many die in just two years was unprecedented.”

It also offered scientists an unusual opportunity. Since the 1960s, park managers had used prescribed burning in some of the sequoia groves. This gave researchers a chance to compare the fates of trees in landscapes that had been intentionally burned, and ones that had been untouched by fire for years until the devastating wildfire struck.

To tease out the differences, researchers used high-resolution satellite images that could show individual trees. They then trained a computer program to pick out giant sequoias and distinguish between live and dead trees before and after the fires. Finally, images of the forest created using LIDAR, a powerful imaging technique capable of peering through foliage, enabled the scientists to discern details including tree heights, spacing and other details about the forest structure.

All told, they examined 19 sequoia groves in the national parks totaling an estimated 26,403 of the giant trees. They spotted almost 8,000 trees killed by the fires – nearly a third of all the trees. The prescribed burning turned out to be a major factor in whether trees lived or died. In groves where a prescribed burn had been done within the previous decade, there was a 77% lower chance of a tree dying from the fires, according to a statistical model paired with the observations. There was even a notable benefit in places where the prescribed fire had happened between 10 and 15 years earlier.

If all the trees had been treated with prescribed burns, the scientists estimate it would have saved another 3,900 sequoias.

Though the new findings provide strong evidence for the benefits of burning, that’s not the case for other popular forms of forest treatments, such as selective logging to thin out overcrowded forests. While none of the groves had received such thinning, the scientists attempted to simulate the potential effects by looking at the LIDAR data to compare tree deaths in places with different forest structure – such as the density of trees. Those factors appeared to have no effect on the likelihood of sequoias dying.

That doesn’t mean such treatments are of no value, the scientists cautioned. It’s possible that fire conditions were so extreme that it erased benefits that might appear in less severe fires. It’s also possible these ancient, more structurally complex forests benefit less from selective logging than previously logged forests that have grown back.

The main message is clear, however. If people want to help sequoias withstand future fires, they’re going to need to learn to love fire.

Dixon, et. al. “Previous prescribed burns saved thousands of ancient sequoias 1 during historically unprecedented wildfires.” Nature Communications. July 11, 2026.

Photo: ©Katherine E Kerlin

A UN effort to keep the threatened 1.5C warming limit alive is exposing deep divisions over the future of fossil fuels, pitting climate-vulnerable nations seeking a faster move away from coal, oil and gas against major emerging economies and producers that oppose targeting particular energy sources.

As countries weigh in on the “Belém Mission to 1.5”, a new process launched at COP30 last year to address the global shortfall in climate ambition, submissions show that small island nations and least developed countries (LDCs) want the initiative to help speed up a shift away from fossil fuels. Their calls for a focus on emissions-cutting measures in the energy sector are supported by the EU and the UK.

But the “like-minded developing countries” (LMDC) bloc – which includes China, India – and Arab states led by Saudi Arabia have warned against singling out specific energy sources or using the mission to assess how individual countries are performing on emissions cuts. Instead, they want its scope narrowed to identifying primarily what rich countries should do to cut their own emissions and provide more climate cash to developing nations.

Keeping 1.5C “within reach”

The split hints at a fight to come at COP31 in November over what the work programme’s findings should say and how much weight they should carry in the summit’s outcome.

Governments launched the Belém Mission to 1.5 at last year’s UN climate summit in the Brazilian Amazon city, after the latest round of national climate plans left the world set to shoot past the Paris Agreement temperature goals. Full implementation of current pledges is expected to limit global warming to only around 2.3-2.5 C by 2100, according to the UN. 

Comment: The case for making polluters pay has moved into the mainstream

The current and two preceding COP presidencies – Türkiye, Brazil and Azerbaijan – are gathering views from governments on how to raise the ambition of national climate plans (NDCs) and adaptation plans (NAPs).

The initiative will culminate in a report at COP31 outlining priority actions for keeping the 1.5C goal “within reach”. But the proposals submitted by individual governments and negotiating blocs representing nearly four-fifths of all countries point to wildly diverging visions of what the Belém Mission should achieve, especially on the transition away from fossil fuels. 

Tracking COP28 commitments

The Marshall Islands has proposed an ambitious package of concrete actions that would enable deep emissions reductions, led by a global commitment to build no new oil, coal and gas infrastructure. Together with its fellow Pacific island of Vanuatu, it also calls for a formal process to monitor progress towards the COP28 energy commitments, map fossil fuel subsidies and help countries phase them out.

The EU also said in its submission that the Mission to 1.5C is “well placed” to provide updates on how countries’ national climate plans have incorporated the COP28 agreement, including the commitment to accelerate a transition from fossil fuels in energy systems. 

Sultan Al Jaber and Simon Stiell celebrate as the Cop28 agreement is passed (Photos: Cop28/Mahmoud Khaled) Sultan Al Jaber and Simon Stiell celebrate as the Cop28 agreement is passed (Photos: Cop28/Mahmoud Khaled)

Countries wanting to build on the COP28 Dubai agreement have struggled to find a dedicated space for those discussions in the face of opposition from fossil fuel producers and big emerging economies.

The COP28 outcomes in response to the first stocktake of global climate action represent “one package… and not a pick-and-choose menu”, the European Commission emphasised in a thinly veiled reference to comments made by the Saudi energy minister in 2024 that the Dubai deal was an “à la carte menu” allowing nations to choose their own priority. 

Push to boost NDC ambition

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) also advocated in its submission for “high-level approaches” towards developed countries and other major emitters ahead of COP31 to spur them to produce updated NDCs with additional emissions-cutting measures. 

Vanuatu called on the COP presidencies overseeing the Mission to 1.5C to “exhibit leadership” by taking steps at home to phase out fossil fuels and reduce their “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. 

Azerbaijan and Türkiye continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels in their energy systems, while Azerbaijan and Brazil remain significant oil and gas producers with plans to expand output.

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In its submission, the LDC group of the world’s poorest nations says the failure to align global climate commitments with a pathway to keep warming under 1.5C is driven primarily by insufficient ambition from major emitters. 

The Mission to 1.5C should focus its efforts on the “highest-impact” and “most feasible” solutions to curb emissions such as phasing out fossil fuels, it added. 

Both the island nations and the LDCs, as well as the African group of nations, stress that significantly scaling up financial resources, and making it easier to access them, are necessary steps to enable the global energy transition. 

Focus on “emissions”, not energy sources

Fossil fuel producers and several large developing economies, however, argue that the mission risks straying beyond its mandate if it singles out particular fuels or evaluates countries’ climate plans.

The Arab group, which is led by Saudi Arabia and includes the UAE, Qatar and Egypt, wrote that it should maintain a focus on “emissions management” rather than targeting specific sectors or energy sources. 

Their submission says investments in fossil fuels “must increase” both to better manage the emissions associated with their production and to meet growing energy demand.

The LMDCs, a negotiating bloc that includes China and India, similarly argue that climate action should address emissions regardless of how they are produced, warning that energy sources should not be traded off against the need for growth. “Poverty eradication and sustainable development remain a key challenge for developing countries, which cannot be compromised in the name of 1.5°C,” the group’s submission says.

No “parallel” processes

For both Arab states and LMDCs, the mission’s primary goal should be to identify how rich countries that are historically responsible for the bulk of emissions can be required to further cut their greenhouse gases and channel more money to developing countries. 

Both groups also caution against allowing the initiative to evolve into what they describe as a “parallel process” that could assess countries’ climate plans or create new expectations for what developing countries should do. Instead, they argue, it should simply produce a report identifying options for international cooperation.

The two sides disagree just as sharply on what should happen to the mission’s report once it lands. AOSIS and the LDC group explicitly want its findings carried forward into the COP31 outcome decision text and used to inform future negotiating rounds. The LMDC bloc, on the other hand, wants a guarantee that the report will not be used to support other processes.

The post UN bid to keep 1.5C alive exposes deepening divisions over fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

In mid-March 2026, Idaho Power Company (IPC) applied to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity (case number IPC-E-26-04), to invest in and construct two new methane gas power plants and extra pipeline capacity in southern Idaho over the next few years [1-5].  IPC proposes to build the South Hills plant on the Snake River near Milner, Idaho, to generate 222 total megawatts of electricity from 12 reciprocating engines by June 2029 (enclosed concept picture), and the Peregrine plant between Boise and Mountain Home, to produce 430 megawatts from one massive, single-cycle combustion turbine by June 2030.  IPC claims that it needs to make investments now in these resources, to meet peak demands beyond its adequate, existing system, and due to the long lead times required to obtain gas generation equipment and additional pipeline capacity.  The company forecasts rapid load growth from committed industrial sites and predicted large-load users.

As the initial, formal step for any utility seeking approval for new infrastructure, IPC is requesting PUC permission to begin accounting for its spending on these gas plants.  If or when it brings these projects online, IPC will engage another PUC process to recover project costs from its customers.  In the present case, Northwest Energy Coalition and Renewable Northwest have intervened in opposition, while large-load users Idaho Irrigation Pumpers Association and computer memory and data storage manufacturer Micron Technology as well as PUC staff represent various interests [6].  Spring 2026 searches yielded little public information about these power plants, beyond the PUC site and industry articles.

As always with the climate-wrecking schemes of the oil and gas industry and its utility enablers, these facilities may manifest the covertly planned destinations for the 80 percent of additional Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) pipeline methane pushed by TC Energy through the GTN Xpress expansion toward Idaho, and/or for the products of two Snake River Oil and Gas wells drilled near the Payette River, the Fruitland city water intake plant, and a dense residential/business area in June and July 2026.  Owner of the other interconnected, regional, methane pipeline network, Williams Companies announced in May the proposed Silver Spur expansion of its Northwest pipeline system from Opal, Wyoming, toward the Northwest, the first phase of its Rockies Columbia Connector ambitions to add a 90-mile transmission line into Idaho, which could impose 275 million cubic feet per day of methane by early 2030 [7].

Climate activists collective Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) noticed these developments in April and has been sharing news, articles, and reflections about the proposed South Hills and Peregrine methane power plants on our weekly Climate Justice Forum radio program, broadcast for fourteen years on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow [8, 9].  Throughout the last year and decades, we also continue to offer public process and direct action support to frontline, Payette County residents opposed to riverside and residential area gas well drilling.  This spring, we were further shocked to learn that a third methane power plant slipped under the Boise resistance radar, as the PUC permitted its construction in Mountain Home.  WIRT hopes that this overbuild of soon outdated and defunct fossil fuels infrastructure in the Idaho high desert does not fuel more remote data centers dreams or distant, urban electrification of utilities and transportation.

In late May, WIRT alerted the Stop Northwest Gas Expansion (SNGE) coalition of Idaho Power’s two-plant proposal, discussed the situation during our meeting, and suggested inviting attorney Ben Otto, the senior policy associate with the Northwest Energy Coalition, to talk with us about this PUC quasi-judicial proceeding, so SNGE coalition member organizations could more actively oppose this (yet another!) Idaho fossil fuels invasion [10, 11].  After contacting Ben, forwarding conversations to SNGE co-workers, and urging further organizer arrangements, Ben joined a regular coalition meeting on Thursday, July 23, and provided an extensive presentation.  Topics covered the two proposed, southern Idaho, gas power plants, insights on PUC decision-making criteria, and best practices for public input from citizens and organizations.

To raise broad Northwest awareness, outreach, and action against this Idaho Power proposal, SNGE posted a recording and slides of Ben’s presentation and question-and-answer session [12, 13].  WIRT features this discussion on the Wednesday, July 29, Climate Justice Forum show, between 1:30 and 3 pm Pacific time, on-air at 90.3 FM and online and archived for two weeks on KRFP [8].  On all of our broadcasts, thanks to generous, anonymous listeners, we typically describe continent-wide, grassroots, frontline resistance to fossil fuels projects, the root causes of climate change.  WIRT greatly appreciates Ben Otto’s ongoing, important work to represent Northwesterners’ best interests to the PUC, and we encourage you to email your questions to them at ben@nwenergy.org.

Please get involved in Northwest efforts to stop ALL fossil fuels infrastructure expansions, by sending a brief comment through the linked PUC form, based on the following suggestions for possible responses, graciously shared by Ben [14].

* The Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is accepting written comments until July 31, 2026, but has not currently scheduled a public hearing.  In your comments, refer to case number IPC-E-26-04, and politely ask for a planned hearing and an extended comment period, due to the summer vacation timing of this public (non-)participation.  If enough, especially Idaho Power customers request these items, the PUC could host both.

* In its decisions, the PUC is primarily concerned with assessing the necessity and public costs of these Idaho Power projects.  Ask the PUC if the utility has a verifiable need for more gas resources, and if the scale and scope of these methane power plants fit energy needs in the most cost-effective and reliable ways to achieve output.  Most significantly, how does IPC intend to finance this proposal?  Idaho Power has not publicly disclosed the huge costs of these projects or their probably cheaper alternatives.

* As IPC stated in other documents, some of its forecasted power needs for these gas plants speculates that new customers will arrive and that new large-load users will pay for the infrastructure and resources that they require.  IPC and/or big electricity users — not later, Idaho Power, residential and small business customers — should carry the risk of investing in projects that may prove unnecessary, if new demands do not materialize.

* IPC’s gas power plan imposes multiple risks on Idaho customers, which neither the PUC nor Idaho Power have adequately, directly analyzed.  International conflicts and economies cause fluctuating methane prices and could inflict rising costs on later IPC customers, raising serious questions about the cost-effectiveness of gas.  Because the regional methane pipeline network is currently running full, IPC must depend on outside actors Gas Transmission Northwest and specifically Williams Companies, to build and/or expand pipelines into Idaho to supply its proposed plants.  Of most concern, pipelines, compressors, and structures with volatile gas chemicals could explode, and they routinely release dangerous emissions that pollute local air and water quality and communities and damage the global climate.

* In this application, absent a full Request for Proposals, and during recent, biannual Integrated Resource Plan processes, Idaho Power and the PUC have not adequately examined these IPC power plant projects or considered available, alternative, clean energy options for sufficient and affordable fuel supplies.  In previous resource plans, IPC showed that batteries could meet peak electricity demands, but has since claimed that batteries are no longer cost-effective, despite federal tax incentives that reduce expenses.  Instead of gambling on gas plants during an accelerating energy transition, IPC could increase investments in implementing solutions such as improved customer energy efficiency and load flexibility, rooftop solar electricity generation, and battery power storage.

* Ask the Idaho Public Utilities Commission to deny IPC’s request for Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity (case number IPC-E-26-04) for the Peregrine and South Hills methane power plants.  If this regulatory agency approves these certificates, it should insist that Idaho Power Company bears the risks of this infrastructure soon becoming cost-ineffective, stranded assets possibly lacking access to inexpensive or any fuel.  Thanks for your climate activism!

[1] Idaho Power Company — Application for Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity for the South Hills and Peregrine Power Plants and for an Associated Accounting Order, March 11, 2026 Idaho Public Utilities Commission

[2] Idaho Power Proposes More Gas Plants to Meet Capacity Needs, May 4, 2026 NewsData

[3] Idaho Power Wants to Build Two Natural Gas Power Plants. Here’s Where and Why, May 7, 2026 Idaho Statesman

[4] Peregrine Energy Center — Proposed Site, 2026 Idaho Power Company

[5] South Hills Power Plant, 2026 Idaho Power Company

[6] Micron’s Plans to Bring Leading-Edge Memory Manufacturing to Idaho, 2026 Micron

[7] Quarter 1 Earnings Recap: Data Centers Accelerate New Growth Paths for Williams, May 5, 2026 Williams Companies

[8] KRFP Radio Free Moscow

[9] Wild Idaho Rising Tide on AudioPort

[10] Northwest Energy Coalition advances clean, equitable, and affordable energy policies by leveraging our analytic expertise and convening a broad alliance of people and organizations.

[11] Stop Northwest Gas Expansion Coalition protects our communities in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington from the health, safety, and climate threats of methane gas.  We are an alliance of public health, faith, and environmental organizations as well as community members committed to: 1) exposing the truth about the harms to our health and safety caused by toxic and explosive “natural” gas, 2) stopping the expansion of gas supply, including increases in gas pipeline pressure, to prevent harm, 3) uniting impacted communities to hold industry and government accountable.

[12] Northwest Energy Coalition on Idaho Power Company Gas Plants, July 23, 2026 Stop Northwest Gas Expansion Coalition (online presentation recording)

[13] Idaho Power Application for New Gas Generation, July 23, 2026 Northwest Energy Coalition (online presentation slides)

[14] Case Comment or Question Form, Idaho Public Utilities Commission

 

As tech companies have built hundreds of hyperscale data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom, they have triggered conflicting predictions over how these facilities will affect the nation’s power grid. Critics have argued that data centers will raise power bills and increase carbon emissions. Supporters claimed they could increase investment in infrastructure and clean energy, leading to lower prices and emissions.

We now have a clearer picture about at least one consequence of the data center boom, and it isn’t encouraging. A report released last week from the Energy Information Administration found that carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector rose by 4 percent last year — larger than the increase in the economy overall, where emissions only ticked up 2 percent.  The agency attributes this rise to a 13 percent increase in coal power generation, partially driven by the proliferation of large-scale data centers.

The national increase in power sector emissions represents the reversal of a longstanding trend. Before the AI boom, U.S. power consumption had been flat for decades. Utilities, grid operators, and energy planners had assumed that pattern would continue, and many planned to retire their older and dirtier coal plants with the expectation that natural gas and renewables could replace them. Instead, electricity demand is rising much faster than anticipated. Data centers could make up more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity usage by 2030, and they operate around the clock, including when wind and solar farm output is low. That demand has extended the life of some aging coal plants.

“Commercial load is starting to grow, and that’s part of the data center story,” said Steve Piper, the director of energy research at S&P Global Energy, a market intelligence firm. “It’s kind of a rising tide lifts all boats phenomenon. While we think structurally coal will decline over time, [the AI boom] is going to slow down that decline.”

The increase in power sector emissions would have been even bigger were it not for the fact that solar and wind energy also surged last year. Utilities can now tap cheap, carbon-free energy during much of the day, which means they are less reliant on fossil fuel-burning plants that make up the backbone of the energy system. Solar now produces more power than coal during sunny months when demand is low. The climate problem is that while solar is still growing, coal is not shrinking. 

The other driving factor behind last year’s increase was that coal became cheaper relative to natural gas, the country’s largest power source. As natural gas exports have increased, domestic gas prices have risen relative to coal.

The coal industry has also been buoyed by increased political support. President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have vowed to revive the nation’s moribund coal industry by supporting new coal power plants and helping build an export terminal that can ship coal to Asia. Wright has issued temporary emergency orders to prevent the retirement of at least half a dozen coal plants around the country, forcing utilities to run plants they had previously sought to shut down. His department has argued that these orders are justified because hot and cold weather are straining the power grid.

But these orders aren’t actually the reason that coal emissions have rebounded. The plants that Wright has kept open are running at a lower capacity than they did before Trump took office, in large part because there are still cheaper sources of power than coal out there. 

Take for example the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan, owned by Consumers Energy. It was the first major coal facility that Wright prevented from closing. At the time, Wright said that the plant’s operation was necessary so that Michigan “[did] not lose critical power generation capability as summer begins.” Yet in each of the last three quarters, the plant has generated less electricity than it did in the equivalent quarter the previous year.  

Instead, the increase is happening across the country. Outside of the Western U.S., nearly every state generated more coal power in 2025 than it did in 2024. One of the biggest jumps came in Virginia, home to the world’s largest AI cluster, where utilities almost doubled their coal power generation to serve the state’s growing clusters of data centers. Nearby coal states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia also stepped up their generation to match data center demand. 

The report is especially concerning since decarbonizing the electricity sector, which accounts for about 25 percent of U.S. emissions, is an essential step toward meeting national climate targets. Unlike in the transportation sector, where electric vehicles still face significant cost and infrastructure barriers, and heavy industry, in which natural gas is still needed to make steel and cement at scale, the power sector has real cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels.

Once electricity became cleaner, switching cars, home heating, and other sectors from fossil fuels to electricity would sharply reduce emissions.  

And there were signs of progress: Emissions from the power grid have fallen by about one-third from their peak around 2005 as utilities have replaced old coal plants with less carbon-intensive methods such as natural gas turbines, which emit about half as much carbon per watt of electricity. The rapid build-out of solar and wind power was supposed to reduce power emissions even further. 

The stubborn presence of coal is a problem for that progress.

“Coal generation may sort of have a floor in our forecasts,” said Piper. He said he expects that in the long run, coal will continue to decline, but that “it will take something else” to dislodge it from the power grid altogether. And until we have a grid with enough round-the-clock power to render the dirtiest fuels unnecessary, the nation’s journey away from fossil fuels will be stuck at the starting gate.  

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline It’s official: Data centers are slowing America’s shift away from coal on Jul 29, 2026.

The European Union’s cap-and-trade system has long been considered the gold standard for market-based emissions-reduction policies, and it’s influenced similar efforts from California to South Korea. Since 2005, it’s helped reduce the EU’s industrial carbon emissions by about 50 percent, and a recent working paper called it the “most impactful climate policy in the world.” But a set of changes proposed earlier this month by the European Commission, the bloc’s legislative body, has called its credentials into question.

Wijnand Stoefs, EU policy lead for the European nonprofit Carbon Market Watch, likened the day of the proposals to Black Friday — and he wasn’t talking about the annual shopping event. Instead, he reached for another metaphor. “Smoke appeared from the 13th floor of the Berlaymont,” he wrote on LinkedIn, referring to the Brussels headquarters of the European Commission. “And it was acrid, tarry, black smoke.” 

Stoefs’ account is unusually evocative, but he shares concerns with other policy experts who say the commission’s proposed updates — including slower emissions reductions and extra leniency for major polluters — will weaken the EU’s Emissions Trading System, or ETS, while potentially emboldening industry groups that want to weaken cap-and-trade systems elsewhere. 

“I think they will have the perfect excuse to go, ‘Hey, the EU isn’t moving ahead as fast as they were,’” Stoefs told Grist. “It’s just, like, a belt of ammunition for industrial lobbyists.”

The ETS is the European Union’s flagship climate policy. It sets a cap on carbon emissions for about 10,000 EU oil refineries, power stations, and other companies that together represent 40 percent of the bloc’s total climate pollution. It works by requiring certain companies to buy “allowances” to cover their expected emissions for the year — and each year, the amount of available allowances shrinks, forcing companies to gradually reduce emissions. Sometimes a polluting company purchases more allowances than they’ll actually need, in which case they can sell their surplus to other firms. Companies that reach the end of the year without enough allowances, however, are subject to heavy fines.

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Until earlier this month, the ETS was on track to steer the companies it covers to net-zero by 2039. The most significant update proposed by the European Commission would delay that timeline. Instead of reducing total emissions by 4.4 percent a year until 2039, the commission proposed to lower emissions by 3.7 percent annually between 2031 and 2035, and then just 1.7 percent thereafter.

In explaining the move, the European Commission said it would “bring relief to industry” while still lining up with EU climate law requiring member states to reduce economy-wide emissions by 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040.

Sven Harmeling, head of climate at the nonprofit Climate Action Network Europe, disputed this claim, saying the bigger issue is all of the extra carbon that may now be released into the atmosphere over the next 14 years. “There are different ways you can get to 2040 with more or less emissions,” he told Grist, and a slower decarbonization timeline has the potential to allow much more pollution than a faster one. Carbon emissions warm up the planet and contribute to more frequent and intense extreme weather, including heat waves, wildfires, and storms.

According to one estimate, the European Commission’s new proposal would allow covered companies to emit roughly 2 billion metric tons more carbon pollution than the previous plan. That’s significant, given scientists’ projection that, as of 2025, the world can only emit another 80 billion metric tons of carbon pollution and still have a two-thirds chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — a threshold beyond which risks to ecosystems and society escalate dramatically.

The ETS “only looks at where we’re going to be in 2040,” Harmeling said. “What happens between 2030 and 2040 is actually what matters to the climate.”

The commission also proposed continuing to dole out free emissions allowances to certain companies, including those it thinks might otherwise relocate in order to avoid paying for their climate pollution. Critics said this could not only disincentivize faster decarbonization; it could enrich big polluters. ETS-covered companies have regularly received more free allowances than they actually need, allowing them to sell and earn billions of euros from them.

Some of those companies, including the steelmaker ArcelorMittal and chemical company BASF, lobbied heavily for the ETS to distribute more free allowances.

To be sure, the details of the European Commission’s proposal may still change; they’re now subject to negotiation with the Council of the EU and European Parliament, and some European environment ministers have vowed to “fight tooth and nail” against a weakened ETS. The final rules are expected by early next year. 

Milan Elkerbout, director of an international climate policy initiative at the think tank Resources for the Future, was less grave in his evaluation of the commission’s proposal. Yes, slower emissions cuts for ETS-covered sectors will require faster decarbonization elsewhere — like in agriculture and construction — but he thinks that’s still possible, keeping the EU’s 2040 target within reach. 

The ETS remains, “by quite a margin, the most ambitious [carbon] trading system in the world,” he added. He said carbon trading mechanisms in California, Washington state, Quebec, South Korea, and elsewhere are different enough to be insulated from direct copy-and-paste modifications — and that, in fact, aligning them more closely with the ETS could raise their ambition rather than lower it.

Still, despite structural differences among regional carbon trading systems, polluters everywhere tend to share similar goals: cheaper emissions allowances, more free pollution permits, laxer rules on carbon credits — all of which serve to drive down the price of carbon. Big polluters in the oil and gas industry are already pushing for these reforms in places including California, which in May said it would expand free emissions allowances to oil refineries. 

Stoefs said it’s hard to see how the European Commission’s recent retrenchment won’t be used to justify — or at least advocate for — similar concessions elsewhere. “If the EU waters down the ETS, I think those other systems will do the same,” he said.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EU might weaken its landmark climate law — the ‘most impactful’ in the world on Jul 29, 2026.

Two days before the sweltering July 4 weekend, Martina Meijer, a New York City elementary teacher who occasionally substitutes over the summer, covered a class. The city’s summer school programhad just begun and that day temperatures reached 100 degrees. 

“Even though the AC was on, it wasn’t working very well,” said Meijer. “There was no programming, no schedule, no plans shared.”  

For four hours straight, Meijer and her students remained in the classroom. The stifling heat drained their energy, leaving them lethargic and making it difficult to focus. When she called the main office to ask if she could take them to the gym or outside for recess, school officials told her the weather was too hazardous, she said. They instructed her to stay in the classroom and give her class of 15 students indoor movement activities — commonly known as “brain breaks” — by following YouTube tutorials.

While many school districts prioritize placing students and staff in schools with air conditioning during summer programming, the blistering temperatures around the country sometimes mean it’s not enough. Problems like malfunctioning air conditioners still persist, and cooling systems have their limits during periods of intense heat like this July’s heat dome. 

Climate change is increasingly testing the limits of how summer programs — when students take part in enrichment activities or remediation — can ensure academic needs are met while keeping students safe from the blazing heat.

Elementary teacher Martina Meijer at City-As-School in the West Village, Manhattan, on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report

Federal regulations that would protect workers like teachers from heat illnesses by mandating water breaks, rest periods and areas to cool off, have stalled for the foreseeable future. 

In recent weeks, schools in major cities and rural communities alike have had to end classes early, close or completely restructure daily activities. 

Kristen Hengtgen, the project manager of UndauntedK12, a national organization committed to reducing carbon emissions in K-12 schools, said that many educators rely on temporary or improvised solutions whenever possible.

“Smaller things that we are seeing now, like moving indoors, moving to air‑conditioned spaces, having hydration breaks and cooling periods when temperatures are unsafe, flexible scheduling, doing stuff earlier in the day — I think that will continue to happen,” said Hengtgen.

When classrooms become overheated or outdoor recess gets canceled, students struggle to focus and learn. Excessive heat impairs cognitive performance, putting students who need extra academic support during the summer at an even greater disadvantage.

“A lot of the kids in summer school may already be having academic challenges,” said Elizabeth Bechard, public health manager at Moms Clean Air Force, an environmental advocacy group dedicated to protecting children from the effects of climate change. “Asking them to catch up with their learning in very suboptimal learning conditions, when it’s too hot to learn, is not going to help so much.”

Elementary school students, staff and volunteers walk back to P.S. 94 The Henry Longfellow School from a trip to the pool before the summer school day ends in Sunset Park on Thursday, July 16, 2026. Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report

Children are especially vulnerable to heat-related illnesses compared to adults. This is because their thermal regulation systems are still developing. They tend to sweat less and breathe faster, Bechard said. And for those without air conditioning at home, the risks are higher for both their physical well-being and their ability to learn effectively.

“If students are going to schools that don’t have air conditioning, and then coming home to homes that also don’t have air conditioning, there’s no chance for the body to really rest and recover,” said Bechard.

On the last day of school in early June, the Philadelphia School District dismissed students early at 52 insufficiently air-conditioned schools due to extreme heat.

“When the mercury climbs above 85-90 degrees, we either send students home early or move those schools to virtual days,” said Tony Watlington Sr., the superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia.

Teachers are also trained to ensure children aren’t exposed to conditions that could lead to dehydration or heat stroke, he said.

“Our teachers do a really good job of using professional judgment and not having kids out in 90‑degree heat with that sun barreling down on what we sometimes refer to as concrete deserts,” Watlington said. 

Without professional training or clear guidelines, however, some families worry about leaving critical heat safety decisions up to teachers.

unuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report

In late June, parents in Virginia’s Alexandria City Public Schools received an advisory letter outlining precautions for staff during an anticipated heat wave, when experts warned the heat index could reach 112 degrees. School officials urged staff to restrict outdoor activities and remain vigilant for signs of heat exhaustion. 

“I feel like it’s a mix of mostly saying the right things, but it’s also dependent on the discretion of various adults,” said one parent, who requested anonymity to maintain her privacy. “We have no idea what level of training they have — like, ‘Be aware of the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke’ is great, but how do we know people are?”

Higher temperatures are also sparking and intensifying the frequency of wildfires. 

In mid July, Canadian wildfires clogged the skies with a thick haze of smoke, forcing programs like Summer Rising in New York City to move all outdoor activities for thousands of students inside. 

While periodic indoor movement breaks keep students engaged throughout the day, they fall short of helping them release energy or recharge in the way outdoor play provides. 

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Research shows that recess improves academic outcomes, social development and emotional regulation. If students can’t expend their energy outdoors, it can hinder their development.

“There’s this horrible chicken-or-egg situation that teachers have, which is: Kids really need to get out and run around, especially younger kids,” said V. Kelly Turner, a heat researcher and professor at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “If they don’t get their energy out outside, they can’t focus on their schoolwork inside. But if they’re outside roasting, then they can’t focus inside either.” 

Nathan Cruz, a parent whose 6-year-old daughter attends Sharp Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles, feels the weight of this predicament. 

“Sometimes [the kids] forget to drink water, could get dehydrated, and there’s been conditions, like nosebleeds,” said Cruz. 

On especially grueling days during the school year, when temperatures climb to triple digits, Cruz said children in the after-school program remain inside the school’s auditorium.

“It’s a lot of kids and it gets tight,” said Cruz. “It can be a challenge because you can’t keep them indoors every day, even though the weather could be over 95 degrees for over two to three weeks at a time.” 

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Schools in the Northeast, like Philadelphia, face similar challenges and were not built to handle unusual and prolonged stretches of extreme heat. 

A 2021 study by the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental group that helps communities hold fossil fuel companies accountable, found that over 13,000 public schools nationwide — many built in a different climate era — would require $40 billion to install HVAC systems. In the Northeast, states that didn’t require air conditioning in the past — like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — need it today. 

On average, public schools in the United States are nearing 50 years old, which means they require major structural upgrades to install proper HVAC systems and improve airflow. Philadelphia’s school buildings are even older — 73 years old, on average. 

“Because it’s an old city and we have a lot of old buildings, we can’t go and just drop air conditioners in all of the windows,” Watlington said. “People ask all the time, ‘Why don’t you just put some $100 air‑conditioning units from Home Depot or Lowe’s and call it a day?’ It’s not that simple.”

During the July 4 week that summer school classes proceeded in New York City, schools in Washington, D.C., canceled all outdoor programs, citing the high temperatures. 

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One district suspended bus routes because its buses lacked air conditioning. Smaller districts, like Joliet Public Schools in Illinois, switched to remote instruction, while the Central Falls School District in Rhode Island shut down all summer programs. 

In the Midwest, the Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin also canceled summer school for elementary students when meteorologists projected temperatures to feel as hot as 108 degrees.

Scott Chehak, senior executive director of building services at the Madison Metropolitan School District, said the district tracks weather forecasts to assess heat risks. 

“If it does hit an extreme weather warning or extreme heat warning, we tend to close schools if we see it coming,” said Chehak. “Sometimes we’ll have calls on the weekends with our executive staff just to make sure that we’re looking ahead.”

They also designate larger, air-conditioned spaces, such as gyms and libraries, as “cooling centers” where students rotate throughout the day. There, children have access to fans, extra hydration centers and specialized cooling towels.

Chehak said they train their staff to look for signs that a child might be overheating, especially for students who might be underprepared for hotter weather. 

“Are they starting to lose attention? Does it feel like they’re warming up? You can tell by human behavior,” said Chehak.

For 14 years, Denisha Jordan, a veteran physical education teacher, worked in one of the hottest regions in Los Angeles at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, where she constantly monitored signs of heat exhaustion. 

“When it comes to the high heat, you see more heat illnesses,” said Jordan. “Their skin will be cherry red. [There’s] profuse sweating, even when the kids aren’t doing anything.”

During her entire time there, the gym and locker rooms never had air conditioning, Jordan said. Outside, beneath the relentless sun, she recalls a student showing her the melted soles of his shoes after playing basketball on the playground’s scorching asphalt. 

“If it’s 80 degrees outside, our blacktop can easily reach 90 degrees and above,” said Jordan. “I would go and put my hands down and see how long I could keep my hands on there, and if I couldn’t keep my hands on there, then I would know that we’d have to be on the grass that day.”

As summers intensify and heat waves creep into the fall months, Hengtgen from Undaunted K12 believes schools will need to create long-term action plans, rather than ad hoc, one-off emergency responses, even during summer school when temperatures are at their highest. 

“Sometimes things like an extreme heat plan may seem fluffy or extra when we have a literacy crisis,” said Hengtgen. “But we are threatening the mission of public education if we can’t provide buildings that are safe and comfortable and healthy spaces for kids to learn and for teachers to teach.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Is it getting too hot for summer school? on Jul 29, 2026.

Cheap, abundant Chinese solar panels have become essential to decarbonizing the global energy system. Without them, the world’s clean energy transition would have arguably been slower and more expensive. But China’s solar manufacturing industry now faces a bizarre problem: oversupply. Chinese solar manufacturers have built far more production capacity than the market can absorb. In fact, China now has enough factories to meet roughly twice the global demand for solar products, according to an analysis by the research firm Rhodium Group. If all newly announced factories get built, the country’s manufacturing capacity could double, further widening the gap between supply and demand. 

The market imbalance has put Chinese solar panel makers in a precarious position. Market analysts and company executives say the industry’s central problem — a massive oversupply of panels — has triggered vicious “price wars” between competing companies and sent prices plummeting. In the first quarter of 2026, the country’s solar manufacturers announced $1.5 billion in losses, an extension of roughly three years of continuous unprofitability. Industry behemoths like JinkoSolar and Longi have also been facing slowing installations in China, U.S. trade barriers, and weaker global demand. 

“There’s been an enormous amount of price wars internally in China, with companies just slashing prices to very, very low levels,” said Hannah Pitt, director of the energy and climate practice at Rhodium Group. 

Chinese officials have spent years trying to curb the cutthroat competition, stem overproduction, and stabilize prices, with little success. For all but the most advanced solar products, prices kept falling, and companies kept building new facilities. Regional governments, which have invested heavily in solar supply chains, have been hesitant to trim local development. Some manufacturers even built illegal factories or produced panels without permits, according to reporting by the South China Morning Post. 

“Everyone is wondering how long this can last,” said Martin Schachinger, a solar product wholesaler based in Germany. “Even TaleSun, a manufacturer we expected to go out of the market five years ago, still exists. So, it’s a little bit … spooky.”  

China designated solar a strategic industry in 2010, prompting massive public investment. Local governments subsidized manufacturers, while private investors expanded every stage of the supply chain in anticipation of booming global demand. The resulting manufacturing ecosystem allowed Chinese firms to produce extraordinarily cheap solar panels for both domestic and international markets.

But production soon outpaced global demand, triggering a fierce battle as manufacturers slashed prices to win customers. The Chinese government dubbed this self-defeating competition neijuan, meaning “involution,” a term originally coined by Chinese students describing the relentless pressure to succeed with diminishing returns. Involution is a common trend in Chinese industries that receive heavy public support, including other clean energy sectors such as batteries and electric vehicles.

For the United States and the rest of the globe, the oversupply has meant consistent availability of cheap solar panels and components that boosted the adoption of renewable energy. Solar panels provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record in May, according to analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Globally, clean power sources, of which solar is the fastest growing, met all new electricity demand around the world in 2025, staving off an increase in fossil fuel generation. It’s helped China, the world’s largest net emitter of greenhouse gases, flatten its emissions growth, too. The country’s emissions appear to have plateaued and could soon peak. 

If Chinese officials correct the oversupply problem, it could cool some of that rapid solar deployment. But experts say China is more focused on advancing its solar industry than rightsizing it, meaning the cheap solar panel prices may continue for years. 

Read Next It’s official: Data centers are slowing America’s shift away from coal Jake Bittle

Chinese officials have called for “concerted efforts” to rein in solar production as recently as April. But the country’s broader industrial policies and stated goals seem to be leaning away from strict discipline, focusing instead on upgrading solar supply chains to produce more advanced technologies, according to a May report by Rhodium Group. In other words, the oversupply problem isn’t scaring China away from its big bets on solar. In fact, its latest five-year plan signals that China will continue supporting its massive clean energy industries, including solar, “optimizing and upgrading“ those industries rather than clamping down on their oversupply.

“It’s a really interesting moment right now across Chinese industries. Instead of just trying to consolidate, Beijing is pushing industries to go further, to move into more advanced manufacturing,” said Pitt. 

The strategy stands in stark contrast to the United States’ steady solar manufacturing growth, which relies on market conditions rather than government support. Over the past year, the Trump administration and Congress have weakened policy incentives for solar, cutting back tax credits expanded in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and impeding solar development on federal land.

But demand for cheap solar has kept the industry growing. Unlike China’s self-sufficient solar empire, U.S. producers can’t meet all domestic demand for solar panels and are still heavily reliant on foreign components, primarily from China. While the U.S. pursues a slower, market-led approach, China has chosen a long-term state strategy that prioritizes manufacturing dominance over near-term profits. 

That manufacturing dominance is especially important now that other countries are pushing back against China’s near-monopoly in the industry. The country’s efforts to upgrade its supply chains and move into higher-value products could help it stay ahead as new technologies reshape the solar market and countries attempt to build their own competing industries.

“If a solar company in Europe doesn’t make a joint venture with Chinese companies and use the huge advantages of the Chinese systems, then it won’t be successful,” said Schachinger. “From time to time, Indian manufacturers try to step into the European market, but against Chinese products, they have no advantages, and the prices are higher.”

That means if unsustainable business models or geopolitical tensions don’t spoil the boom, the world will have at least a few more years of low-cost Chinese solar products to supply its decarbonization goals, experts suspect.

“This isn’t over yet,” Pitt said. “I think the data points to prices remaining low for the foreseeable future.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline China’s solar industry is losing money. The country is doubling down anyway. on Jul 29, 2026.

The Roadmap finally recognises food systems as a critical national infrastructure. The government must now focus on market regulation and supply chain intervention, says LWA.

The post UK: The Landworkers’ Alliance Responds to Farming Roadmap 2050 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

New books on denial, green colonialism, wildfires, energy, the far right, global crises and our ties to nature

Source

Social media driving wild animal pet trade Channel Comment brendan 29th July 2026 Teaser Media

I was originally told to speak on the theme of “reform vs. revolution” for this conference. So my talk will be based on this topic, which I hope also provides a structure for understanding how critical theory can meaningfully inform one’s own activism. When I heard the theme, my instinct was to return to a text I first read as a newly radicalized undergraduate here: Rosa Luxemburg’s classic text, Reform or Revolution. I want to kick us off today with a few lines from Luxemburg responding to this theme. She writes:

It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a long-drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content … people who pronounce themselves in favor of the method of legislative reform in place and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer, and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society, they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society.

Luxemburg had quite a clear vision of what this new society would be: a socialist system, where society is democratically and collectively managed, realizable only through the seizure of political power by the working classes.

This is a positive and comprehensive vision of politics. By positive, I don’t simply mean good vibes, and by comprehensive, I don’t simply mean aspiring to have the blueprints for solving all of the world’s problems. I mean understanding how you define and give content to the alternative system you are fighting for, and how to get there. This concrete political horizon allows Luxembourg to distinguish revolution from reform. According to Luxemburg, the difference between revolution and reform isn’t merely a quantitative one—as if there were a universal yardstick to determine which reform is revolutionary or not, or as if winning a certain number of reforms determined how revolutionary you are. Instead, Luxemburg tells us, it’s a qualitative difference: revolutionary politics will include struggles for reforms of some kind, but those reforms will always be part of a larger strategy to replace the capitalist system with a concrete political alternative in the form of socialist governance, rather than simply winning reforms without a larger end goal in mind.

In school, we learn many different ways to tear things down, to critique, to dismantle. This is the bread and butter of critical theory, and this method allows us to begin making sense of the world. This is an essential starting point for any radical politics. But what actually is the content of the political alternative we want, and how do we fight for it? Those of you with experience navigating the challenges of forming and running any new organizational space, whether it’s figuring out a decision-making process for a Palestine solidarity encampment or setting ground rules for a union’s core committee, may begin to grasp the difficulty. These questions are all the more urgent now as we consider what world we want beyond one consumed by authoritarianism and empire. They are also all the more urgent because many of you are confronted with the question of life after college, and have to make some concrete decisions about what to do now. Luxemburg’s ideas of revolution, socialism, and class conflict may seem too grandiose and abstract to be immediately relevant to the question of what to do after college. But I want to argue today not only that these ideas are relevant, but also that Luxemburg’s Marxism is one example of how a critical framework and method can cohere the different threads of life.

Considering life after college, let alone pursuing social justice work, can be daunting. Most of you will have to balance your ideals with pressing practical matters, namely, finding a job and paying your bills. Those of you who are baristas for the school cafe,  RAs, tutors, office assistants, or prospective student tour guides are already getting a taste of this balancing act. Unless you go on to work for some social justice organization, like a union or nonprofit, you won’t have the time to do all the political and organizing work that has animated you in these few years. And even if you work for a social justice organization, the chances are your organizing will inevitably be narrower, more constrained by the interests of external entities that fund you (through grants and foundations), and likely filtered through the more limited terrain of electoralism. Many of these organizations are tied to the very state you want to confront. There is the added pressure of organizing being tied to your source of income. An old Polish Marxist, Isaac Deutscher, once told a room full of college students during the sixties that it is quite easy to be radical at school. He said school is like a bus. You hop on for a few years and get off. You are unattached, like kites in the sky, he says, “without any ropes tying [you] to the earth. Very soon you will feel the rope.” Student movements have played a monumental role in history in pushing for social change, but Deutscher argued that student activism ultimately has an unstable role in politics because it’s not fully “anchored in the realities of social life.”

For Luxemburg, life under capitalism in general is also unstable. It is a system constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, one that sacrifices people to the bonfire of profit before repeating the cycle to re-stabilize itself.

For Luxemburg, life under capitalism in general is also unstable. It is a system constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, one that sacrifices people to the bonfire of profit before repeating the cycle to re-stabilize itself. Whether we like it or not, we keep this system running when we work. And we have to do this because we, as the working class, must participate in it to survive, and our livelihoods and working conditions are mostly subject to the whims of our employers. Luxemburg’s good news is that this wretched system has also laid the foundation for a better world. Capitalism, by thrusting most of us into some shared conditions of exploitation, whether you work for a nonprofit, a cafe, a school, a factory, or remotely for a corporate office, gives us the experience of collectively running something together. From that experience, we can practice exercising collective power to change our conditions through unions and other movements. This can become the basis for running a society together, collectively and democratically.

After graduation, most of you will join the ranks of this working class. According to Luxemburg, because of this class position, you can be part of a greater struggle for a different way of organizing society. The daily discontent and routines you will register at work, which will occupy most of your waking hours, can become the very seeds of a revolutionary politics grounded in the reality of social life, not a distraction from it. Whether you consciously work to organize this class toward Luxemburg’s vision of revolution, this class will continue to play a pivotal role in the development of history, helping to determine the state of capitalism, whether in influencing systemic cycles of stability and crisis or in ending these cycles.

Luxemburg’s endorsement of revolutionary politics builds on this specific theory of historical development. History is characterized by the contest for political power between different classes, and revolutions have always been how this contest has played out. Revolutions are simply a fact of history. Any kind of legislative reform, she argues, is limited by the political framework of the regime we live under, whose constitution itself is a product of some kind of revolution. Her theory of revolution rests on the perspective that the system we live in is riddled with contradictions that constantly threaten it, and that these cannot be resolved simply by the gradual accumulation of legislative reforms. But at the same time, fighting for reforms has an important place in social movements, as it provides us with avenues to gather and count our forces, and build our confidence through the practical experience of collective struggle.

And so, revolution is not opposed to reform. It is opposed to reformism, which, at its core, is an aimless collection of reforms that requires no political alternative to the current order that revolution demands. Reformism is organizing for its own sake, with the ultimate goal of simply making things less bad than they are. Instead, Luxemburg directs us to situate our activism in a larger political project and strategy. This vision and strategy will nearly always include fighting for some kind of reform, whether it’s fighting for a wage increase or pushing the city council to change a policy, in the context of a larger political strategy and project, rooted in the perspective that the system is fundamentally unstable and unreformable. Reforms can be opportunities for movements to practice confronting power directly. But the trap of reformism is the illusion that reforms can ultimately offset the system’s underlying instabilities. History teaches us two truths that we must reckon with. On the one hand, any accumulation of reforms will eventually trigger some violent reaction by the state against movements. On the other hand, there are few, if any, revolutionary movements that have ever won power without engaging in the slow grind and spadework of building their forces by fighting for certain reforms. We need a critical method that can orient us toward a political strategy that synthesizes these two contradictory truths. Luxemburg’s outlook doesn’t offer a one-size-fits-all answer for what to do next, but it provides a critical framework for asking the right questions.

Luxemburg’s Marxist perspective yields evergreen questions that are salient at every stage of our political life. What is the state of capitalism at any given moment? Is the capitalist system finding a way to stabilize itself once again, or is it in another era of crisis and stagnation? In any case, be it stability or crisis, how does that limit and open certain political possibilities? What is the state of the working class and other communities marginalized by capitalism, which must be sufficiently organized in order to fight capitalism? How are specific conditions—the strength or weakness of capitalism, or of the working class—a product of a whole host of historical reasons? Are working-class movements waging offensive struggles and building power against capital, or are they mostly fighting defensive battles, struggling to protect existing rights under threat? Most relevant, what is the best role for you at any given moment to effectively change social conditions around you as they exist? How does your analysis of world conditions inform how you situate your organizing work in the broader fight against the system?

What is the best role for you at any given moment to effectively change social conditions around you as they exist? How does your analysis of world conditions inform how you situate your organizing work in the broader fight against the system?

I’ve been speaking quite abstractly up to this point, so I’ll use my own experience as one example of what this journey can look like. When I was a student here, I was overwhelmed by everything I read in and out of class. I read and wrote papers on all kinds of random topics, just as I became radicalized to the left as Trump won his first electoral campaign. But there was little direction connecting these two aspects, my reading and organizing. I just read anything that interested me, and organized where I felt I had the most use. I joined a socialist group because I considered myself a socialist. I became active in immigrant justice spaces because I am an immigrant. Later, I became active in tenant organizing in Chinatown, because I spoke Cantonese, and that ability was useful there. I engaged in international solidarity work when mass protests erupted in Hong Kong, because that’s where I’m from.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with doing any of this then. But one day, a political mentor of mine asked me, how do you determine where and what you spend time and resources on in your political life? I said: I don’t know, just wherever I can be useful, whatever I’m interested in? He reminded me that engaging in politics as a Marxist is not just about my skills or interests. It’s also about how I recognize the objective conditions of the world at any given moment, and, from that analysis, figure out the most pressing political questions and tasks that need to be worked on. Then, consider how my skills and interests can contribute to these. This doesn’t mean just aimlessly hopping from one popular movement to another, but rather analyzing how different events and movements relate to one another, and how they reveal an internal logic in how the system functions as a whole. This is not a mere academic exercise, but a way to seriously make sense of our material conditions in order to change them.

For example, I understand the capitalist system today as being in a state of crisis. This is related to the capitalist class struggling to maintain the same rate of profit, unlike, say, the 1990s when neoliberalism appeared stable. On a global level, this manifests as competition and violent rivalry among imperialist and capitalist powers, which have also renewed wars of national oppression, like the US and Israel’s neocolonial wars against Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. This free rein of imperialist powers is only possible because of the scaling back of social reforms won by working-class movements decades ago and the overall decline of their power. Indeed, working people are resisting these forms of violence—Palestinians’ defensive war against Israeli settler-colonialism, everyday Americans forming rapid response groups to defend against ICE, or workers forming unions to defend their workplace rights. But this resistance is still too weak and/or isolated to mount a united, offensive fight against the system as a whole. The working class is not yet a clearly articulated force in these movements.

There are historical reasons for this. We can explain why many of us feel powerless in stopping our government’s imperialist militarism. It relates to the decades of neoliberalism that have crushed working-class institutions and movements everywhere that had once fought against capital and empire with decisive power. It relates to how the state has insulated foreign policy, corporate power, among other spheres of politics, from democratic oversight, a reactionary process that also took years.

This analysis informs my life choices. It helps me determine what to read (or reread), what organizing spaces to be in, and how to divide my time between work, politics, and leisure. I’m active in my union because I believe that building collective power at work is foundational to the larger task of rebuilding working-class power to effectively fight capitalism. I continue to organize tenants in Chinatown because I believe the tenant movement is key to strengthening the LA Left. It is also one of the few sites today where I believe the Left can begin to rebuild some presence in the immigrant Chinese working class. To better understand the state of global capitalism and geopolitical flashpoints, I read about political economy, finance, and the histories of other countries. Last and most importantly, my socialist politics ties all of these threads together. This means I believe that social movements, which are, by definition, politically eclectic and limited in scope, are not sufficient to help us win a better world. To win a socialist system, we need socialist organization that can organize the best revolutionaries from these movements toward a definite political program. We must contest power on the basis of this program to win the world we want. I hope to play a part in continuing the work of people like Luxemburg in fighting for a socialist system, so I remain in a socialist organization.

To win a socialist system, we need socialist organization that can organize the best revolutionaries from these movements toward a definite political program.

My key question for everyone today is what would it look like for you to situate your social justice work within a larger critical structure and method, to articulate a positive vision of a political alternative to replace what we have today? Yours may be different from mine. But what I want to leave you all with is a definition of revolution that is about not just imagining, but also fleshing out, developing, and fighting for a positive vision of politics. This is not just a matter of subjective will, as in simply the desire and drive to make revolution. Elsewhere in her book, Luxemburg faults those who neatly separate pursuing reforms as “action of intelligence” from pursuing revolution as “action of feeling.” Revolutionary politics is the union of intelligence and feeling. It is grounded in a bold alternative to existing politics and guided by a rational strategy for achieving that alternative and realizing its ultimate goals. It helps us bridge critical theory with social justice by framing our theory and activism within the larger drama of history. It allows us to locate ourselves in a long historical lineage of class struggle that precedes and will succeed us, with other revolutionaries struggling for the same world.

Featured Image credit: Plakat; modified by Tempest

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

The post Revolutionary Futures appeared first on Tempest.

Roseville, Minn. (July 28, 2026) — Earlier this month, Audubon Upper Mississippi River was awarded $840,000 from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund to launch the Adopt-a-Flyway...

PFAS may be in your kid’s favorite plush animal – what parents need to know Monica Amarelo July 28, 2026

Give a beloved teddy bear or other stuffed creature to a baby or toddler and they might try to put it in their mouth. A new study suggests that this typical behavior could expose them to the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS used in making the toys.

Levels of the most notorious forever chemicals PFOA and PFOS – linked to cancer and other serious health harms – in stuffed animals were below European health guidelines, the study found. But 100% of the toys tested released detectable levels of short-chain “replacement” chemicals, specifically perfluorohexanoic acid, or PFHxA.

PFAS can migrate from stuffed toys and into a child’s mouth during normal play. The study, by Swiss researchers, raises concerns about the next generation of chemicals quietly replacing “legacy” PFAS like PFOA and PFOS, which are banned from children’s products. 

The study was published recently in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology. 

Whack-a-mole regulatory gap

Researchers tested 18 stuffed toys marketed for infants and toddlers. To measure how chemicals leach into the artificial saliva used in the study, the scientists simulated the kind of prolonged mouthing and chewing babies do naturally when playing with plushies.   

As federal and state regulators banned older PFAS compounds like PFOA and PFOS, manufacturers pivoted to making products using short-chain alternative forever chemicals. But because these replacement chemicals are often more water-soluble and mobile, they can easily migrate into a small child’s saliva when the stuffed toy is chewed or sucked on, the study found.

While a small study – just 18 toys – cannot represent every product on the market, the research highlights a persistent regulatory loophole: chemical companies replacing one unsafe compound with another substance that has received far less scrutiny. This whack-a-mole approach to tackling PFAS means current policies don’t adequately cover the chemicals replacing PFAS in stuffed animals. 

It doesn’t mean every plushie in your home is a hazard. But the fact that short-chain replacements were found in each toy is a concern. Washing toys before play can help, as can shopping for stuffed animals made from natural fibers and avoiding those labeled “stain resistant.”

And the study further underscores the need to regulate PFAS as a class rather than one by one, the current approach. 

Health risks of PFAS exposure

PFAS exposure and health risks start before birth. They’re toxic at extremely low levels and known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment and can build up in the body. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has detected PFAS in the blood of 99% of Americans, including newborn babies.

PFAS readily cross the placenta and have been detected in umbilical cord blood, confirming that the developing fetus faces direct prenatal exposure. 

Detections of PFAS in the infant formula millions of American babies depend on as their sole source of nutrition means the exposure did not begin at the first feeding. For many infants, it has already been accumulating for months.

A recent study also links prenatal PFAS exposure to premature birth, low birth weight and infant mortality. It can also cause thyroid disruption, harm to the male reproductive system, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, reduced fertility and shorter duration of breastfeeding. 

The impact on infants and toddlers is especially pronounced. Babies are not small adults when it comes to chemical exposure – they are categorically more vulnerable.

Does washing help?

For years, standard advice for parents was simple: Throw new plush toys in the washing machine before handing them to a child.

Washing helps for some of the PFAS that are well-linked to harm.

In the study, washing reduced detected amounts of the forever chemicals PFHxA and PFOS by 95% to 100% in most toys. While a simulated water rinse lowered overall chemical migration in most toys, it actually increased the release of certain short-chain chemicals in a subset of products. 

For the forever chemical PFBA, washing increased migration in some toys. Researchers suspect mechanical agitation during washing may break down synthetic coatings or loosen fibers, making these chemicals more accessible on the fabric's surface.

What else parents and caregivers can do

Parents shouldn’t need a degree in toxicology to buy a safe stuffed animal.

While parents cannot shop their way out of a systemic chemical regulation problem, there are small, practical steps that can help minimize exposure during critical developmental windows: 

• Skip “stain-resistant” or “easy clean” claims. Avoid plush items, nap mats, or baby gear marketed as “spill-proof,” “stain-resistant” or “easy-clean.” These marketing labels are often red flags for fluorinated treatments and a common way PFAS gets intentionally added to textiles.
• Opt for untreated, natural fibers. Choose plush toys made from certified organic cotton or wool, rather than synthetic materials, which are far more likely to feature stain- or water-repellent chemical treatments.
• Swap teethers. During peak mouthing phases, offer teethers made from 100% natural rubber, untreated wood or solid organic cotton, instead of synthetic plush toys.
• Tackle household dust: Since textile coatings break down over time, chemicals migrate into household dust where infants crawl and play. Regular vacuuming with a HEPA filter and damp-mopping floors helps reduce household dust that may contain PFAS. 

Areas of Focus Household & Consumer Products Family Health Children’s Health Toxic Chemicals PFAS Chemicals ‘Forever chemical’ replacements in toys also prompt safety questions Authors Monica Amarelo July 29, 2026

The Kaska Nation has spent years developing a vision for a proposed Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) in Northwest British Columbia called Dene K’éh Kusān, which means Always Will Be...

As Congressional leaders prepare to negotiate a final pipeline safety reauthorization package, more than 75 national, state and local organizations urged Congressional leaders to reject any legislation that fails to meaningfully protect communities from the rapid expansion of carbon dioxide pipelines. The groups warn that the current proposal leaves in place significant safety gaps unaddressed despite years of warnings following a 2020 pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi. The pipeline buildout is backed by what the U.S. Treasury estimates will be nearly $70 billion in industry tax credits authorized in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that passed last year.

While Congress is considering legislation in the name of pipeline safety, the coalition points out the current legislation fails to establish minimum protections for communities and first responders that are necessary before the industry is allowed to build tens of thousands of miles of new carbon dioxide pipelines. The letter also points out that the administration is actively weakening existing pipeline safety oversight and enforcement, making all pipelines less safe.

The letter comes as Congressional leaders must reconcile differing pipeline safety bills that passed through House and Senate Committees, and the White House is cutting oversight and enforcement for pipeline safety across the board.

“Congress is telling communities to shoulder all the health and safety risks while pipeline companies are making off with billions in taxpayer dollars. Communities deserve more than empty promises about stronger rules at some point in the future. If lawmakers are serious about pipeline safety, they should stop drafting bills to benefit the pipeline companies and start drafting them for people who have to live with the consequences of these dangerous projects,” said Jim Walsh, Policy Director, Food & Water Watch.

"There’s no pipeline safety when the regulations are drafted by the oil and gas industry. For decades, fossil-fuel infrastructure including pipelines have dictated lifespans across Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income neighborhoods, exposing these communities to higher rates of disease and early mortality. As the Trump Administration dismantles more and more safeguards, we will see even more chronic illnesses and dangerous pipeline disasters that harm our neighbors and families. Congress must pass comprehensive pipeline safety standards that actually safeguard people’s lives and livelihoods — not cut corners for industry profit," said Mar Zepeda, Legislative Director at Climate Justice Alliance.

“Landowners should not be criminalized for protecting their private property rights,” said Emma Schmit, Bold's Pipeline Fighters Organizing Director. “Farmers who have been waiting on federal regulations for years now should not be forced to accept potentially deadly CO2 pipelines on their farms through eminent domain. Without any adequate federal rules, the industry is plowing forward seeking state authorizations for dangerously unregulated projects while keeping the public in the dark with regard to the full scope of potential risks.”