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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

Shell and Equinor’s Jackdaw gas project was widely expected to receive a decision this month. Instead, that decision now appears likely to slip until after the politically sensitive Holborn and St Pancras by-election on 8 October. The government insists it has never publicly committed to a timetable. The result is another delay for a North Sea project already shaped by court rulings, downstream-emissions assessments and climate politics.

Shell’s Jackdaw project has encountered another obstacle.

This time, however, the obstacle is not engineering.

It is not geology.

It is not even a fresh court judgment.

It is timing — and, according to several reports, electoral politics.

Reuters reported on 11 September that the British government is expected to delay a decision on whether Jackdaw can proceed to production until after the Holborn and St Pancras parliamentary by-election on 8 October 2026.

Earlier reports had suggested approval could come as soon as the following week.

Instead, according to the latest reporting, the decision may now be pushed into late autumn. (London South East)

That is a significant change.

But one important qualification needs to be made immediately.

The UK government says it never publicly confirmed a decision date for Jackdaw.

Its Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has declined to comment on speculation and says any decision will consider the relevant environmental assessments and the representations received during consultation. (London South East)

So there are two distinct propositions.

It is established that a decision has not yet been announced.

It is widely reported, citing Whitehall and government sources, that the timing has now slipped beyond the by-election.

What is not formally established by the government itself is that electoral considerations are the reason.

That distinction matters.

Jackdaw was supposed to be entering its final regulatory stretch

Jackdaw is not a newly discovered prospect waiting for someone to decide whether it should be developed.

The project is already physically advanced.

Shell’s 2025 annual report recorded that substantial progress had been made on the field and that the project was expected, subject to regulatory approval, to become operational in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The topsides had already been towed from Norway and installed on the Jackdaw jacket in October 2025.

Shell also submitted a new Scope 3 emissions assessment in September 2025 as part of the process of re-establishing production consent.

That makes the latest delay particularly awkward.

The infrastructure exists.

The field has been developed.

The remaining difficulty is securing a lawful consent regime after the courts invalidated the earlier environmental approval process.

The court problem began with downstream emissions

The central legal issue is now familiar.

In June 2024, the UK Supreme Court ruled in the Finch case that an environmental impact assessment for an oil development must take account of the greenhouse-gas emissions produced when the extracted hydrocarbons are ultimately burned.

That principle subsequently affected offshore oil and gas projects including Jackdaw.

Shell’s own updated Scope 3 assessment explains the chain of events directly.

The company records that the Finch judgment required consideration of downstream emissions and that the same interpretation of environmental assessment law applied to offshore developments governed by the 2020 offshore EIA regulations. (Shell UK)

That legal development ultimately forced a reconsideration of Jackdaw’s environmental approval.

The Scottish court ruled the previous consent unlawful

In January 2025, the Court of Session dealt directly with challenges to Jackdaw and Equinor’s Rosebank project.

The legal position was unusually stark.

The parties agreed that the earlier decisions were unlawful because the environmental impact assessments had not considered downstream emissions from burning the oil and gas that would be produced.

The dispute was therefore not primarily about whether the original environmental assessment was lawful.

It was not.

The real question was what remedy should follow.

Lord Ericht ruled that the decisions should be quashed and reconsidered lawfully, with downstream emissions taken into account.

However, the reduction of consent was suspended while fresh decisions were sought, allowing construction work to continue.

What could not happen was production.

No oil or gas could be extracted until a fresh lawful decision was made. (Climate Policy Radar)

That distinction explains the odd position Jackdaw now occupies.

It can be physically almost ready.

Yet legally unable to produce.

Shell submitted the new climate assessment

After the government issued supplementary guidance on how downstream emissions should be assessed, Shell supplied the additional material required for Jackdaw.

The company’s updated Scope 3 submission explicitly addresses the climate effects associated with the eventual use of Jackdaw hydrocarbons.

It treats those emissions as downstream Scope 3 emissions driven by consumer demand and sets out the methodology Shell says should be used to assess them under the revised regulatory framework. (Shell UK)

A further public consultation followed.

Shell’s own Jackdaw permit page records that additional information was published in November 2025 and that consultation on that material closed on 22 December 2025. (Shell UK)

So by this year the argument was no longer simply:

Did Shell assess downstream emissions?

It had.

The new question became:

Does the revised assessment justify renewed production consent?

Opponents say the project should still be rejected

Environmental campaigners have continued to argue that Jackdaw should not receive fresh approval.

The Weald Action Group, whose campaign helped produce the Finch judgment, submitted representations opposing Jackdaw during the renewed consultation.

Its submission specifically linked the Court of Session ruling to the earlier Supreme Court judgment and argued that Shell had been forced to reconsider the climate effects of downstream emissions because of those legal victories. (GOV.UK)

Other environmental groups, including Greenpeace and Uplift, have similarly argued that expanding North Sea production is inconsistent with UK climate objectives.

For them, the revised emissions analysis does not solve the underlying problem.

It simply quantifies it more honestly.

Shell and industry make a very different argument

Shell’s position is fundamentally different.

Jackdaw is a gas-condensate field in the Central North Sea.

The company has argued that domestic production can play a continuing role in UK energy security while the economy transitions towards lower-carbon energy.

The Court of Session record noted Shell’s submission that the viability of the project could be threatened if consent were permanently lost and that the project had wider implications for UK energy supply and investment. (Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service)

Industry supporters also argue that Britain will continue consuming oil and gas regardless of whether it produces those hydrocarbons domestically.

From that perspective, refusing Jackdaw does not necessarily eliminate demand.

It may merely increase reliance on imports.

That argument has gained political force during periods of elevated energy prices and concern about security of supply.

Jackdaw can be significant without transforming UK energy security

Both sides are prone to rhetorical inflation.

Jackdaw is significant.

But it is not the North Sea equivalent of discovering Saudi Arabia.

Court records describe it as an ultra-high-pressure, high-temperature field expected to produce for roughly eight years.

At peak output, Shell has estimated that Jackdaw could supply gas equivalent to around 6.5% of UK demand. (Climate Policy Radar)

That is meaningful.

But it is also temporary.

And it does not mean Jackdaw alone determines whether Britain is energy secure.

Equally, arguing that the field makes no difference because it cannot transform the whole national market understates the importance of individual domestic supply sources.

The sensible position lies between the slogans.

Jackdaw matters.

It is simply not decisive by itself.

Then came the political complication

Until very recently, reports suggested the government was moving towards a decision.

The latest reporting has changed that expectation.

The Financial Times reports that the decision has now been delayed until at least October amid the politically sensitive Holborn and St Pancras by-election, previously represented by former prime minister Keir Starmer. (Financial Times)

The Guardian similarly reports that Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh had been expected to make her recommendation shortly, but that Whitehall sources now believe the decision will not be made before Parliament enters its party-conference recess.

That timing would push the announcement beyond the 8 October vote. (The Guardian)

The Green Party leader, Zack Polanski, is standing in the constituency.

And he has made opposition to additional North Sea drilling a prominent feature of his campaign. (The Guardian)

That is why Jackdaw has suddenly become entangled with a parliamentary by-election hundreds of miles from the North Sea.

The accusation: Labour does not want Jackdaw on the ballot paper

The political charge is straightforward.

Critics allege that the government does not want to approve a controversial gas field immediately before a by-election in a constituency where the Greens are mounting a serious challenge.

If that is what has happened, it would mean the timing of a major energy-infrastructure decision was being influenced by short-term electoral considerations.

Conservative critics have already made that allegation.

The opposition has accused the government of putting political convenience ahead of energy security.

The Green Party has made the opposite accusation: that Labour is concealing its true intention to approve Jackdaw until after voters have gone to the polls. (The Guardian)

Remarkably, both criticisms depend on the same assumption.

That Jackdaw is likely to be approved.

But the government has not admitted any political delay

This is where factual discipline becomes important.

The government has not formally announced:

We are delaying Jackdaw because of the by-election.

Instead, its position is that no public timetable was ever promised.

The energy department says any determination must take account of all relevant evidence, including the environmental assessment and public consultation responses. (London South East)

So the claim of electoral delay rests on media reporting based on unnamed government and Whitehall sources.

That reporting may be accurate.

Indeed, multiple outlets now point in the same direction.

But it remains reporting rather than an official ministerial admission.

Any responsible account should preserve that distinction.

The Labour manifesto problem

Jackdaw also sits awkwardly inside Labour’s broader North Sea policy.

Labour’s 2024 manifesto committed the party to ending new oil and gas exploration licences.

But Jackdaw does not require a brand-new exploration licence.

It concerns production approval connected to an already licensed field.

That creates a politically uncomfortable middle category.

Labour can say it is honouring its commitment not to issue new exploration licences while still allowing certain previously licensed developments to proceed.

Environmental campaigners regard that distinction as legalistic.

Industry regards it as essential.

The government is therefore caught between two incompatible pressures.

Reject Jackdaw and it will be accused of undermining domestic energy production, investment and North Sea jobs.

Approve it and it will be accused of watering down climate policy.

There is no politically painless answer.

A by-election makes that dilemma worse

Normally, such contradictions can be managed through consultation documents, ministerial statements and carefully drafted policy language.

A by-election changes the incentives.

Holborn and St Pancras is an urban constituency with a substantial environmentally conscious electorate.

The Green Party has chosen to field its national leader there.

That creates an obvious political risk for Labour.

Approve Jackdaw before polling day and the Greens can campaign against a concrete government decision.

Delay it and Labour faces accusations that it is hiding an unpopular decision until voters can no longer punish it.

Either way, the field has become political ammunition.

That is a remarkable fate for an offshore gas project hundreds of miles away.

Jackdaw is already part of a much larger argument about Britain’s energy future

The latest delay should not be viewed in isolation.

Britain is trying to reconcile four objectives that frequently conflict:

lower emissions;

energy security;

affordable consumer prices;

and:

continued investment in domestic energy infrastructure.

The argument becomes especially difficult when natural gas is involved.

Gas emits carbon dioxide when burned.

But it also plays a major role in heating, electricity generation and industrial energy consumption.

Renewables are growing rapidly.

Yet their intermittency means Britain still requires dispatchable generation and balancing capacity.

North Sea production is declining structurally.

Meanwhile, Britain imports increasing quantities of energy.

That is the policy environment in which Jackdaw is being judged.

No individual project can resolve those tensions.

But every individual project becomes a proxy battle for them.

The jobs argument is also contested

Supporters of Jackdaw frequently point to employment and economic activity.

Opponents challenge how many jobs the project will actually create directly.

Guardian reporting in July cited documents suggesting Jackdaw itself would support only 27 direct full-time jobs, while broader industry estimates include indirect employment, construction activity and supply-chain effects. (The Guardian)

That does not mean the wider economic effect is zero.

Nor does it mean thousands of permanent workers will be stationed on the platform.

Both sides tend to select the employment measure most favourable to their argument.

Again, the distinction is between:

direct permanent jobs

and

total employment supported across construction, supply chains and associated activity.

They are not the same thing.

Shell has already invested before receiving its final answer

From Shell and Equinor’s perspective, the regulatory sequence must be deeply frustrating.

The project was originally approved.

Major construction followed.

The legal framework changed after Finch.

The previous consent was declared unlawful.

The courts nevertheless allowed physical development to continue while a new lawful consent process took place.

Shell prepared the new downstream-emissions assessment.

A public consultation was completed.

And the field now sits physically advanced while awaiting permission to produce.

That does not give Shell an entitlement to approval.

Legal compliance must come before sunk cost.

But sunk cost explains why the stakes are so high.

This is no longer a debate about whether someone should drill an exploratory hole.

Billions of pounds of infrastructure and corporate planning sit behind the regulatory decision.

An especially awkward moment for Shell

The timing is also notable given Shell’s wider strategic direction.

Under Wael Sawan, Shell has emphasised:

upstream hydrocarbons,

LNG,

capital discipline,

shareholder distributions,

and investment in projects capable of producing competitive returns.

Only this month Shell completed its major acquisition of ARC Resources in Canada.

In the United States, it is actively rearranging gas-fired power assets to strengthen trading positions.

And its upstream leadership is benefiting from a period of strong market valuation.

Against that backdrop, Jackdaw is an anomaly.

It is exactly the sort of hydrocarbon asset Shell generally appears willing to develop.

But unlike Shell’s North American projects, its fate depends on a particularly combustible mix of UK climate law and domestic politics.

The historical irony

There is an irony here.

The legal challenge that destabilised Jackdaw was not ultimately based on whether emissions would arise directly from the platform itself.

It concerned emissions produced later, when customers burned the hydrocarbons.

For decades, oil and gas companies sought to distinguish the emissions from their own operations from those arising from consumer use.

The Finch judgment changed the environmental-assessment landscape by requiring the downstream consequence to be considered at the project-approval stage.

That is why Shell now has a document specifically titled:

JACKDAW SCOPE 3 EMISSIONS ASSESSMENT.

The vocabulary alone illustrates how much the regulatory environment has shifted.

A gas field is no longer assessed merely as an offshore engineering project.

Its ultimate combustion emissions have entered the planning equation.

Commentary: regulation by election calendar would be a bad precedent

If the government is simply taking the time necessary to consider a complex environmental assessment properly, there is nothing improper about a delay.

Major energy projects should not be approved merely because companies want certainty quickly.

But if — and this remains an if — the decision has genuinely been moved solely to avoid electoral embarrassment before 8 October, that would be troubling.

Regulatory decisions should be made because the evidence is complete.

Not because polling day has passed.

Equally, environmental campaigners should be careful what they wish for.

A short political delay does not necessarily mean Jackdaw is closer to rejection.

The opposite may be true.

The current reporting largely assumes that approval remains probable and that the politically inconvenient element is simply when to announce it.

If that interpretation is correct, delaying the decision until after the by-election would not represent a climate-policy victory.

It would represent political choreography.

Shell waits again

And so Jackdaw enters another period of uncertainty.

The field was approved.

The approval was challenged.

The environmental assessment was found wanting.

The consent was quashed.

Construction continued.

A new Scope 3 assessment was submitted.

Consultation followed.

Approval was expected.

Now the decision appears delayed again.

Shell has spent years building the field.

Campaigners have spent years trying to stop it.

The courts have forced the government to reassess it lawfully.

And now a Westminster by-election may have become the latest factor in deciding when the country finally learns Jackdaw’s fate.

There is something almost absurd about that sequence.

An ultra-high-pressure gas field beneath the North Sea.

A platform already installed.

An emissions assessment running through Scope 3 carbon accounting.

A legal precedent originating in an onshore Surrey oil case.

And perhaps, finally, a parliamentary contest in central London determining when ministers feel politically comfortable announcing the result.

That is modern British energy policy in miniature.

What is established

The previous Jackdaw production consent was ruled unlawful because its environmental assessment did not include downstream emissions. A fresh lawful decision is required before production can begin. (Climate Policy Radar)

Shell submitted a revised Scope 3 assessment, and the government conducted a further consultation process. (Shell UK)

The field is physically advanced, with its topsides installed, and Shell had expected production subject to regulatory consent.

No new production approval has yet been publicly announced.

What is reported but not formally confirmed

Reuters, the FT, the Guardian and other outlets report that the decision is now likely to be delayed until after the 8 October Holborn and St Pancras by-election. (London South East)

The government has not formally confirmed that electoral considerations are the reason.

It says it never publicly committed to a decision date and that all relevant environmental evidence and consultation responses must be considered. (London South East)

Sources

Reuters, 11 September 2026: Government expected to delay the Jackdaw decision until after the October by-election. (London South East)

Financial Times, 11 September 2026: UK delays Jackdaw decision amid politically sensitive by-election. (Financial Times)

The Guardian, 11 September 2026: Decision likely to move beyond the Holborn and St Pancras vote. (The Guardian)

Shell — Jackdaw permit applications: project description, additional Scope 3 materials and consultation record. (Shell UK)

Shell — Jackdaw Scope 3 Emissions Assessment: Shell’s revised downstream-emissions assessment following Finch. (Shell UK)

Court of Session: Greenpeace and Uplift judicial-review proceedings concerning Jackdaw and Rosebank; previous consents found unlawful because downstream emissions were not assessed. (Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service)

Shell Annual Report 2025: physical progress on Jackdaw, topsides installation and anticipated operational timetable subject to consent.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

 

From Expected Approval to Late-Autumn Delay: Shell’s Jackdaw Gas Field Gets Caught in UK Electoral Politics was first posted on September 11, 2026 at 10:40 pm.
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The Department of Energy overstepped when it ordered an aging coal-fired power plant in Michigan to stay open past its planned retirement date last year, a federal court ruled on Friday. 

The J.H Campbell plant is one of seven fossil fuel plants around the country that the Trump administration has forced to stay in operation, despite the pollution they cause and the enormous costs of keeping them online. Just before it was about to close last May, Trump’s Energy Department invoked short-term emergency powers under the Federal Power Act to keep the 64-year-old plant running, arguing that the threat of outages, along with the need for more energy to power data centers, constituted an emergency. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected that argument, with Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard writing that the emergency statute “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop.”

When he declared a “national energy emergency” on his first day in office in 2025, President Donald Trump instructed federal agencies to use whatever emergency powers they had to increase energy production — specifically for fossil fuels. This ruling represents one of the first successful legal challenges to how the administration has used its “energy emergency” powers.

It doesn’t overturn the idea that there is an energy emergency, said Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. Clean Energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, one group involved in the lawsuit. But it does limit its practical implications. 

“You can say there’s an ‘energy emergency’ as much as you want — even if you’re the president,” Kelly said. “But what you can actually do depends on what the real facts on the ground are and what the law actually lets you do in different situations.”

Of all of the coal plants that the Trump administration has forced to stay open, the Michigan plant has emitted the most pollution, according to Kelly. Since it was forced to stay open, it has emitted 1,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 140 tons of particulate matter as of the end of June. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that mix of pollutants could contribute to about 100 new cases of asthma for the 3,000 people that live near the plant in West Olive, Michigan. Its continued operation since May last year has cost $259 million, which the utility, Consumers Energy Company, is seeking to recover from its customers in Michigan and 10 other states.

The court order doesn’t mean that the plant has to shut down immediately. Kelly hopes that the Trump administration voluntarily backs down, or if that doesn’t happen, that the court could force a shutdown. But the administration could challenge the ruling, delaying action by asking for a re-hearing or for a review by the Supreme Court, said Gavin McCabe, senior litigating counsel at the Natural Resources Defense Council, another environmental group involved in the lawsuit. 

Either way, the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling sets a precedent that there has to be a true emergency to keep these plants open. Several lawsuits against the other fossil fuel plants have been on hold as courts waited to see how the federal court ruled on the case, and the legal arguments there are pretty similar, Kelly said. 

It’s hard to square the idea of an “energy emergency” with the Trump administration’s actions against renewable energy: By mid-August, the administration had committed about $4 billion in payouts to companies to stop offshore wind projects that could have, altogether, powered more than 15 million homes.

“Why would the administration be blocking sources of energy that are ready to come online in favor of keeping online something that has been set to be retired?” McCabe said. “I mean, there appears to be a pretext that the president wants to help coal industry supporters. And this is one of the ways to attempt to do that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A federal judge just told Trump there’s no ’emergency’ to justify keeping a Michigan coal plant open on Sep 11, 2026.

On Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, a small band of activists marched past the gates of a sprawling plant nursery in Leicester, North Carolina, outside of Asheville. The sun beat down on rows of steamy greenhouses where workers moved through aisles of houseplants ready for sale. The activists were on their way to deliver a petition to Costa Farms, the world’s largest grower of indoor houseplants. 

Oscar Rozo, an Episcopal clergy member who works with Spanish-speaking immigrants in Western North Carolina, was among the leaders of the group. Their petition calls on Costa Farms to ensure that plant nursery workers have sufficient protections from extreme heat, including access to water, shade, and paid breaks. “We’re part of the community,” Rozo said to the Costa Farms managers present. “The nursery industry has been part of Asheville’s economy.”

As the activists lined the hallways, workers in the plant nursery looked up curiously, but kept their distance.  

Rozo and the other activists were taking part in a multi-state action organized by WeCount, a worker-led labor and human rights group, targeting the five cities in the U.S. where Costa Farms operates nurseries. “We consider this a very historic day of action,” said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount, who earlier that day helped deliver a petition to a different Costa Farms nursery in Apotheke, Florida. “And we know this is only the beginning.”

Since 2021, WeCount has been advocating on behalf of outdoor workers who lack meaningful protections from extreme heat. Based in South Florida, WeCount previously campaigned for a municipal heat standard in Miami-Dade County, where deaths from heat exposure are estimated to spike by 600 during extremely hot periods. But those efforts were cut short in 2024, when industry groups complained and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed a law preempting local governments from enacting their own heat standards. (DeSantis said such regulations could cause “a lot of problems.”)

Planting Justice, WeCount’s new campaign to protect outdoor workers across the South, aims to bring corporations like Costa Farms to the table and create consumer awareness around where their plants come from — and the human cost of growing them. 

Read Next Congress may kill the federal heat rule before OSHA can Frida Garza

This model of mobilizing for stronger workplace protections is known as worker-driven social responsibility. WeCount’s campaign is heavily inspired by the Fair Food Program, which farmworkers have successfully used for years to boost their labor conditions and is considered the highest standard of labor protections for farmworkers in the U.S. The Fair Food Program, launched in 2011 by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, has proven effective as a framework for workers to continually surface and address their needs. For example, while access to drinking water is one of the core tenets of the program, this year, workers won the right to electrolyte beverages or supplements year round.

“We know that every year this crisis is getting worse,” said Londoño, referring to how summer temperatures climb year to year, driven by human-caused climate change. “But increasingly, legislative avenues are more and more limited.”

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather. In the U.S., official counts of deaths from extreme heat exposure vastly underreport the scope of the problem, as a two-year investigation by Boston University and NPR recently demonstrated. For years, labor advocates and community groups have pushed for the creation of a federal heat standard — a set of guidelines that would apply to employers across the country designed to reduce workers’ risk of heat illness. While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — or OSHA,  the nation’s workplace regulator — seemed to be making progress toward such a rule under the Biden administration, those efforts have since stalled out. Meanwhile, agricultural workers, a category that includes plant nursery workers who handle the greenery directly, are excluded from federal collective bargaining protections under the National Labor Relations Act. And yet, agricultural workers are also more than 35 times more likely to die from heat-related complaints than workers in other industries.

Katie Myers / Grist

In a statement, Costa Farms told Grist it has received multiple awards for the quality of its workplace protections. “We have a full-time, on-site nurse with a functional medical clinic and our robust heat protection policy is aligned with the proposed OSHA heat safety rules,” said Ariana Cabrera de Oña, the company’s senior vice president, general counsel, and head of human resources. After Hurricane Helene struck North Carolina, Costa Farms rolled out a policy of holding daily five-minute meetings for workers and supervisors to discuss potential health and safety risks, including extreme weather forecasts. When certain wet bulb temperatures are reached, workers are also provided with “increased break frequency [and] additional hydration stations,” according to the company.

The goal of the Planting Justice campaign is for Costa Farms to sign onto a code of conduct developed by workers. The agreement outlines relatively straightforward demands: educating workers and supervisors on the signs of heat illness; providing access to shade, water, and rest breaks; and creating systems for monitoring and responding to heat stress. 

Organizers believe the agreement would help directly address issues that workers themselves see on the job. For example, while Costa Farms reports that the company provides access to hydration stations on very hot days, workers have reported water with a strong chemical smell, as well as seeing mold in water coolers, said Londoño. 

Alejandro Gonzalez, a Costa Farms nursery worker originally from Guatemala, told a Florida rally that the summer days have topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit on occasion. “They don’t give us cold or clean water,” Gonzalez said emphatically, in Spanish. “They don’t provide any breaks or shade.”

Eighty-six percent of Costa Farms workers who responded to a survey by WeCount reported dangerous incidents on the job, stemming from heat illness, pesticide exposure, and workplace accidents. Over two-thirds reported being entirely denied breaks and days off. The visa conditions of many houseplant workers – dependent on H2-A or other visas, or entirely undocumented – leave them with few rights to recourse, often entirely dependent on their employers for housing, and unable to rely on much of federal labor law for support should they speak out.

WeCount sees Tuesday’s action as just a start. The group is also calling on major retailers – like Home Depot and IKEA, that buy plants from Costa Farms – to only work with growers who agree to this code of conduct. 

Soon after they walked into the Leicester office, Costa Farms’ management asked Rozo and the other activists to leave the premises. They delivered the petition and walked out.

Correction: This story previously misstated the year the Fair Food Program launched.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s houseplants come at a steep price for greenhouse workers on Sep 11, 2026.

After years of strategic pivots, greenwashing controversies, corporate name changes and arguments over what Shell actually wants to be, American motorists have delivered a remarkably simple verdict: when it comes to filling the tank, Shell remains the brand they are most likely to consider — and the one they associate most strongly with quality.

Every now and then Shell plc receives some genuinely good news that does not require a 50-page sustainability report to explain it.

This appears to be one of those occasions.

New YouGov BrandIndex research has ranked Shell No. 1 among US gas-station brands for consumer consideration.

Among Americans who visit gas stations, 25.4% said they would consider Shell the next time they needed to fill up.

That puts Shell comfortably ahead of:

7-Eleven — 22.8%

ExxonMobil — 20.3%

Circle K — 18.4%

Chevron — 17.0%

BP — 15.5%

followed by Wawa, Love’s, Sunoco and Marathon.

The figures were highlighted by CSP Daily News under the headline “Shell leads U.S. gas station rankings as Circle K posts biggest gain.”

And on this occasion the headline is justified.

Shell really does lead.

Read the YouGov 2026 US gas-station rankings

More significant still: Shell also wins on quality

Being considered is one thing.

Being thought good is another.

And this is arguably where Shell’s result becomes more impressive.

YouGov also measured consumers’ perceptions of quality.

Shell recorded a net Quality score of 29.0 — the highest of every brand included in the analysis.

The nearest challengers were:

ExxonMobil — 23.8

Chevron — 23.2

7-Eleven — 19.2

That is quite a gap.

So Shell does not merely have the largest consideration score among US gas-station visitors.

It also has the strongest perceived-quality score.

For a company whose red-and-yellow emblem has been attached to filling stations around the world for generations, that is an extraordinarily valuable piece of brand equity.

The Shell logo has survived almost everything

Consider what has happened behind that familiar sign.

Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and the “Shell” Transport and Trading Company operated through their complicated dual-company structure for almost a century.

They unified in 2005 under Royal Dutch Shell plc.

In January 2022, the company abandoned both “Royal Dutch” and its dual-share structure and became simply Shell plc.

Chief executives came and went.

Strategies changed.

Oil prices boomed and crashed.

Shell expanded into electricity, renewables, hydrogen and EV charging.

Its energy-transition ambitions were repeatedly revised.

The corporate headquarters moved to Britain.

The company has been involved in some of the largest environmental, political, legal and reputational controversies in its history.

And yet in America, motorists still see that yellow scallop against its red background and apparently think:

Shell. Fuel. Quality.

Corporate structures are temporary.

A powerful consumer brand can be remarkably persistent.

But Circle K is coming up fast

There is, however, one important qualification.

Shell may be No. 1, but its score did not increase over the previous year.

It fell.

Among brands with sufficient BrandIndex history for a year-on-year comparison, Shell’s consideration score declined by 0.8 percentage points.

ExxonMobil was also down 0.8 points.

BP fell 0.7.

The biggest winner was Circle K, whose consideration score increased by 1.2 percentage points.

Marathon gained 0.6 points and Love’s gained 0.4.

So the proper interpretation is not:

Shell is racing away from everyone.

It is:

Shell remains the national leader, while some competitors — particularly Circle K — are gaining ground.

That distinction matters.

Shell’s weakness: value

There is another wrinkle.

Ask consumers about quality and Shell wins decisively.

Ask them about value for money, and the picture changes.

YouGov’s net Value scores put:

7-Eleven first — 18.5

Wawa — 15.6

Circle K — 14.8

and then:

Shell — 14.5

That is not disastrous.

Shell still scores positively.

But it suggests a recognisable consumer proposition.

Shell is perceived as good.

It is not necessarily perceived as cheap.

Anyone familiar with premium fuel branding such as Shell V-Power may not find that terribly surprising.

Convenience-store operators also have an advantage on the “value” question because motorists are evaluating more than petrol.

YouGov specifically notes that 7-Eleven, Wawa and Circle K — all major convenience-store businesses — occupy the top three Value positions.

A customer stopping at Wawa or 7-Eleven may be assessing coffee, food, loyalty rewards and convenience alongside the contents of the fuel tank.

Shell’s historic competitive advantage is different.

It is the fuel brand itself.

Regional America tells another story

America is too large and diverse for any national ranking to tell the whole story.

YouGov therefore divided the country regionally.

Shell leads the South, with consideration of 27.9%.

It also leads the Midwest, at 24.8%, narrowly ahead of BP at 23.3%.

But Shell does not win everywhere.

In the West, Chevron leads with 26.4%.

In the Northeast, ExxonMobil leads at 24.2%.

That regional variation is important because petrol retailing is intrinsically local.

Motorists cannot choose a brand that does not have a conveniently located station.

And regional convenience-store chains can develop exceptionally powerful customer loyalty.

Nevertheless, for Shell to emerge as the overall national leader across such a fragmented market is a meaningful result.

And there is another remarkable result across the Atlantic

YouGov published its equivalent UK petrol-station rankings on the same day — 8 September 2026.

The British results are dramatically different.

In Britain, the supermarkets dominate consideration:

Tesco Petrol — 50.3%

Sainsbury’s Petrol — 41.3%

Asda Petrol — 32.2%

Morrison’s Petrol — 29.3%

BP comes fifth at 28.2%.

Shell is sixth at 26.9%.

On price-conscious British forecourts, therefore, Shell is nowhere near No. 1 for consideration.

But then comes the interesting part.

Ask British motorists about quality and Shell is suddenly back on top.

Shell records the highest UK net Quality score at 24.6, ahead of BP at 23.0 and Esso at 17.7.

So the same broad perception appears on opposite sides of the Atlantic:

Shell equals quality.

In America that quality perception accompanies the highest consideration score.

In Britain it has to compete against the formidable value and loyalty proposition of supermarket petrol stations.

Read the YouGov 2026 UK petrol-station rankings

A brand stronger than the corporation behind it?

There is a broader question here.

How many American motorists filling their cars beneath the Shell sign know — or care — about Shell plc’s corporate strategy?

Probably not many.

They are unlikely to be considering:

Shell’s $13.9 billion acquisition of ARC Resources;

its latest LNG investment;

its retreat from selected renewable projects;

its Capital Markets Day return targets;

its executive remuneration;

its upstream production guidance;

or the finer points of Wael Sawan’s “more value with less emissions” strategy.

They see the scallop.

They know the name.

They have accumulated years — perhaps decades — of impressions about the product.

That distinction between the corporate Shell and the consumer Shell brand is important.

Companies can spend billions trying to manufacture brand recognition.

Shell inherited and cultivated one of the most recognisable commercial symbols on Earth.

Its value cannot sensibly be measured merely by adding up the petrol stations carrying it.

Even Shell’s loyalty programme has considerable strength

There is supporting evidence.

Separate YouGov research published in 2025 found that Shell Fuel Rewards had a 17% membership share among US fuel-loyalty programme members, making it one of the strongest fuel-branded loyalty programmes in the survey.

Only broader retail programmes from Costco and Kroger, at 22% each, and Sam’s Club at 19% ranked higher.

Among specifically fuel-branded schemes, Shell Fuel Rewards led the field.

For its members, fuel discounts were overwhelmingly the principal attraction.

That adds another layer to Shell’s US retail position.

The company has not merely retained visual recognition.

It has also managed to attach a functioning loyalty ecosystem to the brand.

Read YouGov’s research on US fuel loyalty programmes

Give Shell credit where it is due

Readers of this website will know that Shell receives plenty of criticism here.

Much of it is based on Shell’s own internal records, court proceedings, regulatory findings and historical documentation.

But independent scrutiny becomes worthless if the conclusion is predetermined.

If Shell deserves criticism, say so.

If the evidence is uncertain, say so.

And when independent research produces a result plainly favourable to Shell, say that too.

This research is favourable.

Shell is currently the most-considered gas-station brand among the US consumers surveyed.

It is also perceived as having the highest quality.

It leads in two major US regions.

And separate British data put Shell at the top for perceived quality there as well.

Those are meaningful brand achievements.

There is no need to manufacture a negative interpretation.

But management should notice Circle K

That does not mean Shell should become complacent.

The year-on-year figures contain a warning.

Shell: down 0.8 points.

Circle K: up 1.2 points.

And Circle K already performs slightly better than Shell on perceived value.

The competitive environment is evolving from one dominated largely by international oil-company brands towards one in which convenience-store networks increasingly compete on food, loyalty programmes, digital services, price and the entire retail experience.

Selling petrol is no longer necessarily enough to win a petrol-station customer.

That may explain why the Shell brand’s greatest comparative advantage remains quality rather than value.

The question for Shell is whether that premium perception will remain powerful enough as convenience retailers continue improving their offer.

Commentary: perhaps the scallop is Shell’s most durable asset

Shell plc owns oilfields, gasfields, LNG plants, refineries, chemical facilities, pipelines, trading businesses, charging networks and interests in power generation.

Assets are bought.

Assets are sold.

Entire divisions are reorganised.

Corporate strategies are unveiled and quietly rewritten.

Even the company name has changed.

Yet the Shell scallop survives.

And the 2026 YouGov rankings suggest it continues to do something tremendously valuable.

It reassures a consumer making one of the most routine purchasing decisions imaginable.

Pull off the highway.

See several competing petrol stations.

Recognise the yellow-and-red shell.

Associate it with quality.

Turn in.

That may sound mundane compared with multibillion-dollar upstream acquisitions.

It is not.

Repeating that decision across millions of motorists over decades is how one of the world’s great commercial brands was built.

There is also a small irony here for Shell’s corporate strategists.

At a time when management is increasingly concentrating on LNG, upstream hydrocarbons, trading, capital discipline and shareholder returns, one of Shell’s clearest independent consumer victories comes from the business with which generations of ordinary people have always associated the company:

the petrol station.

After all the talk about becoming an integrated energy company, a power trader, an LNG leader and an energy-transition business, American motorists have offered a wonderfully old-fashioned endorsement.

They still like the Shell sign when they need petrol.

Sometimes a century-old brand does not need reinventing.

What the research does — and does not — establish

The YouGov results measure consumer perceptions and consideration, not actual nationwide fuel sales or market share.

A 25.4% consideration score does not mean Shell operates 25.4% of US petrol stations or sells 25.4% of US motor fuel.

Nor does Shell’s No. 1 Quality score objectively establish that its fuel is technically superior to every competitor’s product.

It records consumer perception.

The distinction is important.

But consumer perception is precisely what a brand exists to influence.

On that measure, Shell has very good reason to be pleased.

Sources

CSP Daily News, 10 September 2026: Shell leads U.S. gas station rankings as Circle K posts biggest gain.

Read the CSP Daily News report

YouGov, 8 September 2026: Fill up favorites: U.S. gas station rankings 2026. Shell ranks first for consideration at 25.4% and first for net Quality at 29.0; Circle K records the largest year-on-year consideration gain. (YouGov)

Read the full YouGov US analysis

YouGov, 8 September 2026: Top of the pumps: UK petrol station brand rankings 2026. Shell ranks sixth for consideration in Britain but first for net Quality at 24.6. (YouGov)

Read the full YouGov UK analysis

YouGov: research into US fuel loyalty programmes found Shell Fuel Rewards among the largest programmes and the leading specifically fuel-branded programme represented in the analysis. (YouGov)

Read the YouGov fuel-loyalty analysis

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

 

Shell Is America’s No. 1 Gas-Station Brand — A Rare Uncomplicated Win for the Shell Logo was first posted on September 11, 2026 at 9:01 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

The North Coast Water Board has changed the date of the adoption hearing for the Gualala Roads Assessment Order. Previous announcements indicated that Order adoption would be proposed at the December 2026 meeting of the North Coast Water Board.

To provide North Coast Water Board ‌‌staff sufficient time to meaningfully consider the significant volume of public comments received from landowners and other interested parties, the adoption hearing is being moved to February 2027.

Additional information about the February 2027 proposed adoption hearing will be provided when available through this email subscription service, on the North Coast Water Board’s Board Meeting page (https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/
northcoast/board_info/board_meetings/2027/index.html), and on the Gualala Roads Program web page (https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/northcoast/
water_issues/programs/gualala_roads/).

Shell is selling a 609 MW Rhode Island gas-fired power station only 20 months after buying it — while simultaneously acquiring another gas plant in Pennsylvania. Follow the assets rather than the slogans and Shell’s evolving power strategy becomes remarkably clear.

Shell plc has provided another useful demonstration of what “active portfolio management” means under chief executive Wael Sawan.

On 10 September 2026, Shell Energy North America announced two transactions at the same time.

It will sell its interest in RISEC Holdings, owner of a 609-megawatt combined-cycle gas-fired power plant in Rhode Island, to Constellation Energy Generation for $715 million.

And it will acquire 100% of Hunlock Creek Generating LLC, owner of 169 MW of natural-gas-fired generation in Pennsylvania.

Both transactions remain subject to regulatory approval and are expected to close in the first quarter of 2027. (PR Newswire)

So Shell is not exactly abandoning gas-fired electricity.

It is selling one gas plant.

Buying another gas plant.

And explaining that the common denominator is trading.

That is where this becomes considerably more interesting than another routine asset-sale announcement.

Shell bought RISEC only last year

There is an important piece of chronology here.

Shell completed the acquisition of 100% of RISEC Holdings on 24 January 2025.

That means Shell has owned the Rhode Island State Energy Center for only about 20 months before agreeing to sell it.

When Shell bought RISEC, the company described the acquisition as strategically important to its position in the ISO New England electricity market.

The 609 MW facility provided Shell with long-term supply and capacity offtake, and Shell said ownership would preserve its existing operations, mitigate market risk and give it reliable, flexible generation.

Shell also said the acquisition was expected to generate an internal rate of return “well in excess” of the hurdle rate for its Power business. (Shell)

In January 2025, therefore, RISEC was a desirable asset providing valuable trading opportunities.

In September 2026, it is still valuable.

Very valuable, apparently.

So valuable that Shell has decided this is a good moment to sell it for $715 million.

Shell’s explanation could hardly be clearer

Andrew Smith, Shell’s President of Trading & Supply, explained the philosophy behind the two deals:

“We selectively invest in assets that strengthen our market position and create value, while remaining ready to realize value when market conditions present attractive opportunities.”

That is arguably the most important sentence in Shell’s entire announcement. (PR Newswire)

This is not the vocabulary of a utility company assembling a permanent fleet of power stations.

It is the vocabulary of a trader and capital allocator.

Buy assets when they improve the trading portfolio.

Operate them while they provide strategic value.

Sell them when somebody offers enough money.

Recycle the capital.

Then buy another asset somewhere else if it better supports the portfolio.

Shell calls it “dynamic” portfolio management.

That description seems entirely accurate.

From Rhode Island to Pennsylvania

The plant Shell is buying is much smaller.

Hunlock Creek Generating LLC owns two natural-gas-fired facilities in Pennsylvania:

a 125 MW combined-cycle power plant, and

a 44 MW simple-cycle peaking plant.

Total generation capacity: 169 MW.

Shell says the acquisition strengthens its position in PJM Interconnection, one of the largest electricity markets in the United States, covering all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia and serving more than 65 million people. (PR Newswire)

Shell has not disclosed the acquisition price.

What it has disclosed is perhaps more revealing.

The company says Hunlock is expected to produce returns above Shell’s investment requirements for its Power business, as established at its 2025 Capital Markets Day. (PR Newswire)

Once again:

returns first.

The real product may not be electricity

Shell describes its US power strategy in language that deserves close attention.

According to the company, Shell Energy North America is focusing on electricity markets where it can exploit its strengths in:

trading and optimisation,

backed by:

battery storage,

and:

flexible power plants. (PR Newswire)

That changes the way these generating assets should be viewed.

The gas plant is not necessarily the ultimate business.

The plant supports another business.

Trading.

Physical generation gives Shell optionality.

It can produce electricity when market conditions warrant it.

It can optimise fuel purchases.

It can manage power positions.

It can trade around physical capacity.

It can supply customers.

It can respond to volatility.

And a peaking plant can become particularly valuable during periods when electricity prices rise sharply because renewable generation falls, demand surges or grid capacity becomes constrained.

In financial-market terminology, physical assets can provide Shell with something extremely valuable:

optionality.

RISEC already demonstrated the model

Interestingly, Shell did not need to own RISEC initially to extract trading value from it.

Shell Energy North America had maintained an energy conversion agreement covering the plant’s entire electricity output since 2019.

That agreement will end when the sale to Constellation closes. (PR Newswire)

Then, in 2024, Shell decided to buy the plant outright.

At the time, Shell said ownership would guarantee its position in the New England market and secure valuable trading opportunities.

Huibert Vigeveno, then Shell’s Downstream, Renewables and Energy Solutions Director, said Shell’s understanding of the facility enabled it to capitalise on the plant’s value within its existing trading portfolio. (Shell)

Now Shell has decided that ownership is no longer the optimum use of the asset.

Constellation evidently sees sufficient value to pay $715 million.

Constellation thinks $715 million is a good deal too

The buyer is hardly approaching RISEC as distressed property.

Constellation says the $715 million purchase price is equivalent to approximately $580 million after expected first-year tax benefits.

It expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to operating earnings and to generate returns above its own 10% unlevered return threshold. (Constellation Energy Corporation)

So we have an interesting alignment.

Shell believes conditions make this an attractive time to realise value.

Constellation believes conditions make this an attractive time to buy.

Both propositions can be true.

Companies have different portfolios, tax positions, market exposures, financing structures and strategic requirements.

But it reinforces the point that the transaction is not a retreat from an unwanted, obsolete gas plant.

It is a transaction involving a valuable power asset which two sophisticated energy companies believe can create value in different ways.

How much did Shell make?

There is an obvious question.

What did Shell pay for RISEC when it acquired the plant in January 2025?

Unfortunately, Shell did not publicly disclose the acquisition price.

The sellers at the time were funds managed by Carlyle, which owned 51%, and Thailand’s EGCO Group, which owned the remaining 49%. (egco.com)

That means it is not currently possible from the published figures to calculate Shell’s profit on the disposal simply by subtracting its acquisition cost from the $715 million sale price.

The historical record does provide some context: Carlyle had acquired the facility years earlier for nearly $500 million, according to contemporaneous reporting, but that is not the price Shell subsequently paid for it. (BostonGlobe.com)

Unless Shell or the former owners disclose the 2025 purchase consideration, claims about Shell making a particular dollar profit on the transaction would therefore be speculation.

What we can say is simpler.

Shell itself says current market conditions provide an attractive opportunity to realise value.

Now look at what Shell has been selling elsewhere

This American gas transaction becomes more revealing when placed beside another recent Shell power deal.

On 3 August 2026, Shell announced that it had agreed to sell its European onshore renewables portfolio to TotalEnergies.

That portfolio covered assets in Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.

It included approximately 500 MW of renewable generation operating or under development, plus a much larger development pipeline.

Shell explained that sale using remarkably similar language:

capital recycling,

portfolio high-grading,

returns,

asset-backed trading,

and concentrating on areas where Shell believes it has differentiated capabilities. (Shell)

Reuters described the transaction more directly: Shell was scaling back lower-carbon investments while focusing increasingly on upstream operations and trading under Wael Sawan. (Euronext Live)

There is a pattern here.

Sell renewables. Sell gas. Buy gas. What is the strategy?

At first sight, Shell’s portfolio movements can look contradictory.

Sell renewable assets.

Sell a gas power station.

Buy another gas power station.

Invest heavily in oil and gas.

Continue talking about the energy transition.

But the contradiction largely disappears when Shell’s overriding criterion is recognised.

The organising principle is not:

renewable good, fossil fuel bad.

Nor is it:

fossil fuel good, renewable bad.

Increasingly, the principle appears to be:

Does this asset generate sufficiently attractive returns and strengthen a business in which Shell believes it possesses an advantage?

If yes, Shell may invest.

If no, Shell may sell.

If an asset has become valuable enough that someone else will pay Shell more for it than Shell believes continued ownership is worth, Shell may monetise it.

And where power assets enhance Shell’s enormous trading operation, the company appears particularly interested.

Follow the money, not merely the megawatts

Consider what has happened in just over a month.

Shell agreed to dispose of a substantial European onshore renewables business.

Shell completed its $13.9 billion acquisition of ARC Resources, massively increasing its North American oil and gas position.

Shell agreed to sell a 609 MW US gas plant for $715 million.

And Shell simultaneously agreed to buy another 169 MW US gas-fired generation business.

Viewed separately, they are asset transactions.

Viewed together, they provide a revealing picture of Shell under Wael Sawan.

This is becoming a company increasingly unwilling to own an energy asset merely because it fits a fashionable category.

Everything competes for capital.

And trading appears to possess an important advantage in that competition.

The word “transition” is doing a lot of work

Shell can reasonably argue that flexible gas-fired generation has an important place in electricity systems containing growing quantities of intermittent wind and solar generation.

When Shell bought RISEC, it explicitly made that case.

Combined-cycle gas plants can start and adjust output more flexibly than many traditional baseload generators and emit less carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than conventional coal generation.

They can therefore help compensate when renewable generation falls. (Shell)

That is a legitimate energy-system argument.

But it also creates an interesting linguistic situation.

A gas-fired power plant becomes part of the energy transition because it supports renewables.

A trading business becomes part of the energy transition because it optimises electricity flows.

LNG becomes part of the transition because it can displace coal.

And Shell remains an energy-transition company while simultaneously expanding some of its largest hydrocarbon businesses.

The terminology is elastic.

The capital allocation is considerably easier to measure.

Shell’s Energy Transition, American Style

There is perhaps no better snapshot of Shell’s present philosophy than these two US transactions.

Sell 609 MW of gas-fired generation.

Receive $715 million.

Buy 169 MW of gas-fired generation somewhere else.

Do not disclose the purchase price.

Move from ISO New England towards additional exposure to PJM.

And explain both decisions through the language of:

trading, optimisation, market position and returns.

That is not incoherent.

Quite the opposite.

It is extremely coherent once one stops assuming Shell’s primary purpose is to maximise ownership of any particular technology.

Shell is increasingly behaving like what it has always been particularly good at being:

a gigantic global energy trader with strategically selected physical assets attached.

A rather different Shell

The older energy-transition narrative encouraged investors and the public to think in terms of replacement.

Oil and gas assets would gradually give way to renewable generation, electric mobility, hydrogen and other low-carbon businesses.

Under Sawan, the emphasis increasingly appears to be economic selection rather than technological replacement.

Renewables survive where Shell believes they generate sufficient returns or enhance the trading/customer platform.

Gas generation survives where flexibility and market positioning justify the capital.

Oil and gas production expands where returns warrant expansion.

LNG continues growing.

Assets move in and out of the portfolio.

And Shell’s traders sit somewhere in the middle, extracting value from the molecules, electrons, storage capacity, generating plants and contracts flowing around them.

This week’s American power deals demonstrate that philosophy almost perfectly.

Commentary

There is nothing inherently wrong with Shell’s strategy.

Indeed, from a shareholder perspective, aggressively recycling capital from lower-return assets into higher-return opportunities is precisely what management is paid to do.

If Shell can own an asset for less than two years and then sell it for a valuation management considers sufficiently attractive, shareholders may reasonably applaud.

And if another gas plant offers superior strategic value within the PJM electricity market, buying that asset may make commercial sense.

The interesting question is not whether Shell is entitled to do it.

Of course it is.

The interesting question is what these transactions tell us about the company Shell is becoming.

Shell increasingly appears less interested in being a conventional electricity generator than in controlling enough strategically useful physical infrastructure to enhance one of its greatest corporate strengths:

energy trading.

That distinction matters.

A wind farm, battery, gas turbine, LNG cargo or electricity contract may all have very different carbon characteristics.

To a trading organisation, however, they can share one vital characteristic.

They are instruments from which value can be extracted.

Perhaps that is the clearest way to understand the Sawan-era Shell.

Not primarily an oil company attempting to become a renewable-energy company.

Not even simply an integrated energy company.

But an enormous global energy-and-capital optimisation machine prepared to buy, sell, trade and rearrange its portfolio whenever the numbers justify doing so.

This week’s transactions provide a particularly neat demonstration.

Yesterday’s prized gas asset is tomorrow’s $715 million disposal.

Tomorrow’s preferred gas asset is 169 MW away in Pennsylvania.

And somewhere between the two sits Shell’s trading desk.

Factual qualification

Shell has not disclosed the amount it originally paid for RISEC in January 2025, so this article makes no claim about the accounting or economic profit Shell will realise from the $715 million disposal.

Shell has also not disclosed the purchase price for Hunlock Creek.

Both transactions remain subject to regulatory approval and are expected to close during the first quarter of 2027.

Descriptions in this article of Shell’s wider strategic direction are commentary based on the company’s disclosed transactions and stated capital-allocation and trading strategy.

Sources

Shell Energy North America, 10 September 2026: Shell’s announcement of the RISEC sale and Hunlock Creek acquisition. (PR Newswire)

Shell — US power plant transactions announcement

Energy Intelligence, 10 September 2026: Shell Trading Arm Buys One US Gas Plant, Sells Another. (Energy Intelligence)

Energy Intelligence — Shell Trading Arm Buys One US Gas Plant, Sells Another

Reuters, 10 September 2026: reporting on Shell’s RISEC sale and Hunlock Creek acquisition.

Reuters — Shell sells RISEC interest to Constellation and acquires Hunlock Creek plant

Shell, 24 January 2025: completion of the RISEC acquisition and Shell’s original explanation of the plant’s importance to its trading position. (Shell)

Shell — Completion of RISEC acquisition

Constellation Energy, 10 September 2026: $715 million acquisition announcement, expected tax benefits and return expectations. (Constellation Energy Corporation)

Constellation — Acquisition of Rhode Island State Energy Center

Shell, 3 August 2026: agreement to sell its European onshore renewables portfolio to TotalEnergies and Shell’s explanation of its asset-backed trading strategy. (Shell)

Shell — Sale of European onshore renewables portfolio

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Shell’s Power Strategy in One Deal: Sell a Gas Plant for $715m, Buy Another and Keep Trading was first posted on September 11, 2026 at 8:47 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Peter Costello sells roughly £1.17 million of Shell shares as the company doubles down on oil, gas and LNG — and shareholders reward the strategy

There is nothing inherently improper about a senior executive selling shares in his employer.

Let us establish that before anyone reaches for the corporate lawyers.

But timing, context and scale can still make an entirely legitimate transaction interesting.

And Shell has just supplied a rather good example.

The Financial Times reports that Peter Costello, Shell plc’s President of Upstream, has taken advantage of the company’s improved valuation by selling shares worth roughly £1.17 million. Shell’s own regulatory disclosure provides the precise transactions: on 28 August 2026, Costello disposed of 31,786 Shell shares in London at £33.41 each, receiving £1,061,970.26, and another 3,214 shares in Amsterdam at €39.115, worth €125,715.61. (Financial Times)

That is 35,000 Shell shares in total.

Perfectly legal.

Properly disclosed.

And rather beautifully timed.

Because Costello happens to run the part of Shell that is currently enjoying perhaps the clearest vote of confidence from chief executive Wael Sawan’s strategy:

Upstream oil and gas.

Meet the man running Shell’s upstream machine

Peter Costello became Shell’s President, Upstream in April 2025.

His Shell career followed the company’s takeover of BG Group. He had previously held senior positions at BG, including President and Country Head in Kazakhstan, before joining Shell in 2016 as Vice President for Nigeria and Gabon. Before reaching the Executive Committee, he served as Executive Vice President, Conventional Oil and Gas. (Shell)

In other words, this is not an executive running a peripheral division.

Costello is responsible for one of the principal engines of Shell’s cash generation.

And under Wael Sawan, that engine has moved increasingly towards the centre of the corporate strategy.

Shell has rediscovered what it likes best

Shell still talks about the energy transition.

It still says it intends to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050.

But anyone following the allocation of Shell’s capital rather than merely its corporate vocabulary can see where management enthusiasm currently lies.

At its 2025 Capital Markets Day, Shell said that it intended to spend approximately $12 billion to $14 billion every year on Integrated Gas and Upstream, while maintaining about 1.4 million barrels per day of liquids production and expanding LNG sales by 4–5% annually through 2030. (Shell)

CEO Wael Sawan was unusually explicit.

Shell said Integrated Gas and Upstream had generated roughly 70% of its organic free cash flow in the previous year and that it intended to continue investing in Upstream both organically and, where attractive opportunities arose, through acquisitions. (Shell)

That last part has now acquired a rather large Canadian accent.

Enter ARC Resources — $13.9 billion worth of conviction

On 2 September 2026, only days after Costello’s share sale, Shell completed its acquisition of Canadian producer ARC Resources Ltd.

The updated equity value was approximately $13.9 billion, with Shell also assuming about $2.5 billion of net debt and leases, giving an enterprise value of roughly $16.5 billion. (Shell)

This is no tentative experiment in wind farms.

ARC immediately adds around 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to Shell’s production.

Shell says the acquisition increases its exposure to long-duration, low-cost liquids and gas production in Canada’s Montney basin and should lift its production compound annual growth rate to approximately 4% through 2030, compared with 2025. (Shell)

When announcing the deal, Shell said ARC brought more than 1.5 million net acres to combine with Shell’s existing roughly 440,000 net Montney acres, as well as around 2 billion barrels of oil-equivalent proved plus probable reservesat the end of 2025. (Shell)

Shell expects the transaction to generate double-digit returns and become accretive to free cash flow per share from 2027. (Shell)

For anyone still trying to determine which parts of the “energy transition” Shell considers most attractive, $13.9 billion is a useful clue.

The market appears to approve

According to the FT, Shell’s shares had risen approximately 27.6% over the preceding year by the time it examined Costello’s disposal. (Financial Times)

That rise is significant because it illustrates an important feature of the Sawan era.

Investors have generally rewarded Shell for talking less about corporate reinvention and more about:

cash flow, capital discipline, LNG, oil, gas, buybacks and shareholder returns.

Shell’s 2025 strategy increased its intended shareholder distributions from 30–40% to 40–50% of cash flow from operations through the cycle, while continuing to prioritise share buybacks and maintaining its policy of progressive dividend growth. (Shell)

The terminology may be corporate.

The proposition is wonderfully simple.

Make more money.

Spend capital where returns are highest.

Return a great deal of the cash to shareholders.

And do not apologise for continuing to produce oil and gas while the world continues to consume it.

For investors primarily concerned with financial returns, the strategy has obvious attractions.

And executives holding Shell shares benefit from the same uplift.

Costello is not the only senior Shell figure to sell

There is useful context here.

CEO Wael Sawan also sold Shell shares earlier this year.

Shell’s official regulatory filing records that on 22 May 2026, Sawan disposed of 40,000 ordinary Shell shares in Amsterdam at €37.170105 each, producing total proceeds of €1,486,804.20. (Shell Plc)

Again, there is nothing in the disclosure suggesting anything improper.

Indeed, executives routinely receive substantial parts of their remuneration in shares, and sales can occur for any number of entirely mundane financial or personal reasons.

Sawan also continued receiving Shell shares through the company’s remuneration and dividend arrangements after that disposal. (London South East)

Costello likewise received 50,402.48 shares in March 2026 when a 2023 Long Term Incentive Plan award vested, and he has subsequently received further dividend shares. (Shell Plc)

That context matters enormously.

Without it, “Shell executive sells £1.17 million of stock” can be made to sound considerably more dramatic than the underlying evidence justifies.

What the share sale does NOT tell us

A senior executive selling stock is one of those events that invites speculation.

So here are several conclusions that the evidence does not support.

There is no evidence from this transaction that Peter Costello believes Shell’s shares are about to fall.

There is no evidence that he has lost confidence in Shell.

There is no evidence that the disposal was connected to undisclosed negative information.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing.

And it would be irresponsible to imply any of those things merely because a senior executive chose to realise part of the value of his holdings.

Shell disclosed the transactions in accordance with the market-abuse disclosure regimes governing persons discharging managerial responsibilities. (GlobeNewswire)

That is exactly what the regulatory system requires.

What it DOES tell us

The transaction is nevertheless illuminating for a different reason.

It provides a small personal-finance footnote to a very large corporate transformation.

When Wael Sawan became chief executive, Shell increasingly reasserted the primacy of returns.

Projects were expected to compete for capital.

Lower-carbon investments were no longer entitled to special treatment merely because they fitted an attractive transition narrative.

Shell’s Capital Markets Day presentation said low-carbon options would account for less than 10% of group capital employed and emphasised higher-return investment throughout the portfolio. (Shell)

Meanwhile, billions continue to flow towards LNG and upstream hydrocarbons.

The ARC acquisition is the clearest recent example.

Shell has just committed nearly $14 billion in equity consideration to acquire a large Canadian oil and gas producer.

And the man now responsible for Shell’s upstream business has converted a little over a million pounds’ worth of Shell equity into cash after a substantial appreciation in the company’s market value.

Those facts belong together — not because one caused the other, but because they illustrate the same corporate era.

“More value with less emissions”

Shell’s preferred slogan under Sawan remains:

“More value with less emissions.”

There is a clever ambiguity in those six words.

Which word comes first?

Value.

Shell says it remains committed to playing a role in decarbonising the energy system and retains its ambition to become net zero by 2050. (Shell)

But the financial architecture of the company increasingly makes clear that the transition must meet Shell’s return requirements rather than the other way around.

Capital expenditure has been tightened.

Return thresholds matter.

Cash distributions have risen in strategic importance.

Integrated Gas and Upstream remain dominant cash generators.

Liquids production is to be sustained.

LNG is to grow.

And ARC Resources adds another 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day immediately.

That does not mean Shell has abandoned lower-carbon businesses.

It means management has become far more discriminating about which of them it wishes to fund.

The shareholder perspective

For an ordinary Shell shareholder, there is an argument that all of this is precisely what management is supposed to be doing.

Executives are not elected to maximise the number of renewable-energy press releases.

They are employed to allocate shareholders’ capital intelligently.

If oil and gas projects produce superior risk-adjusted returns while legal demand for those products remains enormous, management can argue that rejecting them solely for appearances would itself be irresponsible.

And shareholders who have watched the share price appreciate may have little reason to complain.

That argument deserves to be stated fairly.

But there is another side.

Shell has spent years presenting itself not simply as an oil and gas company but as a major participant in — and at times architect of — the global energy transition.

The greater the proportion of capital and strategic attention flowing back towards hydrocarbons, the more closely investors, policymakers and the public are entitled to compare Shell’s environmental messaging with what the company actually funds.

The money tells a story too.

Often a clearer one than the advertising.

A million-pound punctuation mark

Peter Costello’s share sale is therefore interesting less as an isolated director dealing than as a punctuation mark in the wider Shell story.

An executive at the top of Upstream sells roughly £1.17 million of stock.

Shell’s shares have enjoyed a substantial valuation uplift.

The company has just completed a $13.9 billion acquisition of a Canadian oil and gas producer.

Its strategy envisages maintaining material liquids production, expanding LNG, returning 40–50% of operating cash flow to shareholders through the cycle and directing the largest portion of annual investment towards Integrated Gas and Upstream.

The FT calls Costello’s transaction taking advantage of a “valuation uplift.” (Financial Times)

Fair enough.

That uplift did not materialise from thin air.

It reflects a market increasingly persuaded by the Shell that Wael Sawan has chosen to build:

leaner,

more financially disciplined,

more unapologetic about hydrocarbons,

and intensely focused on shareholder returns.

Peter Costello happens to be running one of the principal businesses delivering that proposition.

On 28 August, he converted a small portion of that proposition into cash.

Around £1.17 million of it.

A necessary disclosure

Nothing reported above suggests that Peter Costello’s share disposal or Wael Sawan’s earlier disposal was improper. Both transactions were publicly disclosed under applicable rules governing dealings by senior managers.

The significance attributed to the transactions in this article is commentary about Shell’s broader strategy and executive incentives, not an allegation concerning the legality or motivation of either sale.

There is no public evidence cited here establishing why either executive chose to sell on the particular date concerned.

Sources

Financial Times, 11 September 2026: Directors’ Deals: Shell’s upstream boss takes advantage of valuation uplift.(Financial Times)

Read the Financial Times report

Shell plc PDMR disclosure, 1 September 2026: Peter Costello’s disposals on 28 August 2026 — 31,786 shares in London for £1,061,970.26 and 3,214 shares in Amsterdam for €125,715.61. (GlobeNewswire)

Shell plc, 2 September 2026: Completion of the ARC Resources acquisition; approximately $13.9 billion equity value, approximately 370 kboe/d of additional production and approximately $16.5 billion enterprise value. (Shell)

Shell — Completion of ARC Resources acquisition

Shell plc, 27 April 2026: Original ARC acquisition announcement, including production, reserves and expected return information. (Shell)

Shell — ARC Resources acquisition announcement

Shell plc Capital Markets Day, 25 March 2025: strategy, capital allocation, shareholder distributions, LNG and upstream production objectives. (Shell)

Shell — Capital Markets Day 2025

Shell plc PDMR disclosure, 22 May 2026: Wael Sawan disposal of 40,000 shares for €1,486,804.20. (Shell Plc)

Shell — Wael Sawan PDMR disclosure

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

 

• Financial Times
• GlobeNewswire
• Shell

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THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 11 SEPTEMBER 2026 SLF-2007-054 The Sakhalin Papers XLIV: The Whales Moved — What the 2015 Data Eventually Revealed The airguns stopped in 2015. The scientific argument did not. Seven years later, a series of peer-reviewed studies finally put numbers on what happened to western gray whales during the unprecedented seismic season off Sakhalin. The results resist both convenient extremes. The whales did respond: their local density fell as accumulated seismic and vessel noise increased, and individual animals changed movement and breathing behaviour. The researchers concluded explicitly that mitigation had not eliminated short-term behavioural responses. Yet models examining reproduction predicted little or no effect from the 2015 disturbance scenario, 14 calves were identified the following year, and the wider population continued its long-term recovery. The evidence therefore supports neither “no impact” nor “population damage proved.” It supports something scientifically more difficult: measurable disturbance, mitigation that reduced but did not eliminate response, and unresolved population-level consequences.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-054
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal scientific records: Glenn Gailey et al., Gray whale density during seismic surveys near their Sakhalin feeding ground; Glenn Gailey et al., Western gray whale behavioral response to seismic surveys during their foraging season, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 2022
Supporting scientific record: Lisa Schwarz et al., Gray whale habitat use and reproductive success during seismic surveys near their feeding grounds, 2022; Lisanne Aerts et al., Seismic surveys near gray whale feeding areas off Sakhalin Island, Russia: assessing impact and mitigation effectiveness, 2022
Contemporaneous scientific record: Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel Statement of Concern, 8 May 2015
Authenticated Shell record: Royal Dutch Shell plc Sustainability Report 2015
Subsequent conservation record: IUCN, 3 September 2016 and 24 April 2019
Court record: Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), used solely for the earlier Sakhalin II environmental and public-finance context
Evidence standard: Statistical association is distinguished from proof of injury or population-level causation. Observed behaviour is distinguished from modelled demographic consequences. Population recovery is not treated as proof that industrial disturbance was harmless. Industry financial and logistical support for parts of the research programme is disclosed rather than ignored.

Introduction

The previous instalment ended on 29 July 2015.

Sakhalin Energy’s seismic operation was over.

Its mitigation system had stopped the source when required.

The Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel would later regard the mitigation component as satisfactorily implemented, while recording shortcomings in monitoring, equipment preparation and training.

But the most important question remained unanswered.

What had the whales actually done?

That was never going to be answered from the vessel log.

A shutdown record could tell scientists when an airgun array stopped.

It could not tell them whether whales elsewhere had changed course.

An acoustic buoy could measure sound.

It could not by itself establish whether a feeding whale shortened its dive, accelerated, moved towards shore or abandoned an area temporarily.

And successful completion of a seismic programme could certainly not establish whether disturbance had energetic or reproductive consequences.

The answer required years of analysis.

In October 2022, much of that analysis finally appeared in a special collection of peer-reviewed papers in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. Two papers in particular examined the questions at the heart of the 2015 dispute: whether whale density changed with accumulated sound exposure, and whether individual whale behaviour changed as seismic vessels and other vessels approached. (Springer)

The findings were not “nothing happened.”

Nor were they “the whales were driven away.”

The truth was more interesting.

1. The 2015 monitoring effort was enormous

Whatever criticism can be made of the 2015 programme, lack of data collection is not one of them.

For the density study, shore teams operated from 13 observation stations between 1 June and 30 September.

Across those stations they accumulated 10,042 distribution scans and 16,817 whale sightings. The researchers noted that the 2015 scan total was more than twice the number collected over the entire previous decade from 2004 to 2013. (Springer)

The behavioural programme was similarly substantial.

Five shore-based teams accumulated approximately 3,843 observer-hours.

They produced 1,270 whale tracks, 401 focal-follow sessions, 44,634 geographic whale positions and 30,735 recorded respiration events.

Around 7,403 movement-analysis intervals and 2,328 respiration-analysis intervals were ultimately derived from the observations. (Springer)

The acoustic environment was monitored with 40 automatic underwater acoustic recorders, nine of which could transmit real-time acoustic information. The system recorded not merely seismic impulses but the wider industrial soundscape: seismic vessels, ordinary vessel traffic, pile driving and other activity. (Springer)

This matters.

The 2015 controversy had originally been framed largely around seismic airguns.

The eventual scientific record showed that a whale inhabiting this coastline did not experience industrial activities one corporate project at a time.

It experienced sound.

2. The first result: whale density fell as vessel noise accumulated

The density analysis attempted to separate industrial sound from the natural factors already known to influence where whales feed.

That was essential.

Whales do not distribute themselves randomly across the ocean.

Water depth mattered.

Distance from shore mattered.

The time of the season mattered.

Geographic position mattered.

And the energy available from important prey groups — including amphipods, isopods and cumaceans — also significantly influenced whale density. (Springer)

After accounting for those factors, however, another relationship remained.

As cumulative vessel sound exposure increased, gray-whale density in the affected area decreased.

The researchers detected a statistically significant relationship over both an eight-hour exposure period and a seven-dayexposure period.

Their interpretation was cautious but clear: the pattern was consistent with both relatively short-term responses and longer responses when vessel activity continued in the same area. (Springer)

That did not mean every whale left.

It did not mean the feeding ground was abandoned.

It meant that, after the other major explanatory variables were considered, fewer whales were present in places experiencing greater accumulated vessel noise.

That is a much narrower proposition.

It is also scientifically significant.

3. The second result: seismic exposure produced a similar pattern

The researchers then examined seismic sound separately.

Again, the result was not an all-or-nothing displacement.

At the shorter timescale, gray-whale density declined slightly as cumulative seismic exposure over the preceding two hours increased.

The decline was greater when exposure over the preceding three days was considered.

Extending the analysis to seven days did not explain significantly more variation than the three-day measure.

The authors therefore interpreted the result as evidence that whales could respond on both shorter and longer timescales — while also potentially returning after periods of higher exposure had ended. (Springer)

This is the evidence behind the headline of this instalment.

The whales moved.

But that sentence needs its qualification attached.

They were not shown to have abandoned Sakhalin.

Some remained within the nearshore feeding area even during periods of relatively high sound exposure.

Others appear to have reduced their use of particular areas and later returned. (Springer)

“Local displacement” is therefore closer to what the data support than “flight from the feeding grounds.”

4. One whale demonstrated the process in real time

The behavioural study contains a particularly useful case example.

Observers were tracking a gray whale that was feeding while a seismic source vessel approached.

As the vessel turned towards the whale’s direction, the animal stopped its original feeding pattern and began travelling towards shore.

When the vessel subsequently moved farther away, the whale resumed feeding.

But it did so in a different area from the one it had originally occupied. (Springer)

One animal does not establish a population effect.

The researchers did not pretend that it did.

What the observation supplies is something more modest but valuable: a visible example of the type of response that the statistical analysis was detecting across the much larger dataset.

The whale did not strand.

It did not disappear permanently.

It altered what it was doing while an industrial source approached.

Then it resumed feeding elsewhere.

5. The whales were also breathing differently

Distribution was only half the story.

The five behavioural teams were recording how individual whales moved and breathed.

Natural behaviour remained the dominant explanation for much of the variation. Feeding whales behave differently from travelling whales, and water depth affects diving and respiration.

But industrial variables still accounted for statistically significant changes.

As vessels approached, whale respiration intervals shortened, surface blow rates increased and dive times decreased.

The approach of seismic vessels was also associated with changes in surface behaviour.

In the movement data, whales increased speed, range and distance from shore as seismic vessels approached, and tended to move more perpendicular to the approaching vessels.

With increasing seismic sound exposure, whales appeared to move closer to shore.

Increasing continuous vessel sound was associated with more reorientation and reduced directionality. (Springer)

The paper’s broader interpretation was straightforward: vessel distance and sound exposure significantly influenced movement and respiration. Whales tended to breathe faster and move faster when vessels were closer or sound exposure was greater. (Springer)

Again, none of that establishes physical injury.

It establishes behavioural response.

That was precisely one of the phenomena the mitigation programme was intended to reduce.

6. The researchers said mitigation did not eliminate the response

This is perhaps the most important sentence in the 2022 behavioural paper.

The researchers considered that the mitigation measures may have reduced larger or longer-term responses.

But they concluded that mitigation “did not eliminate behavioral responses” in the short term. (Springer)

That conclusion deserves to be preserved without embellishment in the historical record.

It does not say mitigation failed.

A mitigation regime can reduce an effect without reducing it to zero.

It does not say the whales suffered population-level harm.

Behavioural disturbance and demographic damage are different questions.

And it does not contradict the conclusion that operational mitigation measures were implemented.

It tells us something the operational record alone could never reveal:

compliance with the mitigation system did not mean the whales behaved as though the industrial activity was absent.

7. The 2015 WGWAP warning now looks prescient — but only up to a point

Seven years earlier, before the seismic season began, the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel had warned about precisely this possibility.

Its formal Statement of Concern of 8 May 2015 arose after WGWAP concluded that the combined scale of planned seismic activity was exceptional and that the Panel lacked some information it considered necessary for final assessment.

The Panel’s concern included the possibility that cumulative acoustic exposure could cause whales to move away from preferred feeding areas. It urged serious consideration of postponing at least some seismic work. (IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group)

The 2022 density results are directionally consistent with that warning.

Higher cumulative industrial sound was associated with lower local whale density.

But it would be wrong to turn that consistency into retrospective certainty.

WGWAP’s pre-survey concern involved possible consequences across the combined industrial programme.

The later studies found measurable relationships within the actual 2015 dataset.

They did not establish that every predicted consequence occurred.

Nor did they establish that the whales permanently vacated preferred habitat.

That distinction is important if this archive is to remain documentary rather than polemical.

8. Sakhalin Energy was not responsible for the entire acoustic environment

The scientific papers reinforce another distinction already made in earlier instalments.

The 2015 season involved two oil and gas operators and up to four seismic source vessels operating across several licence blocks.

Sakhalin Energy conducted its Piltun-Astokh programme.

Exxon Neftegas conducted separate seismic operations.

The monitoring programme deliberately captured sounds and whale responses associated with activity beyond a single company boundary. (Springer)

Ordinary vessel traffic, fishing vessels, research vessels and support operations also contributed to cumulative sound exposure. (Springer)

The later results therefore cannot responsibly be expressed as:

“Shell’s survey caused all the whale movement observed in 2015.”

The data do not establish that.

They establish associations between whale responses and the combined acoustic and vessel environment during a season of unusually intensive offshore activity.

Sakhalin Energy was part of that environment.

It was not all of it.

9. A paradox: the better the dataset became, the more effects scientists could detect

There is an important methodological lesson buried in these papers.

Earlier analysis of the 2010 seismic operation had found little or no measurable behavioural response.

That result had helped support a highly positive public account of the Sakhalin mitigation model.

But the 2022 behavioural paper pointed out a limitation in those earlier studies: the datasets had been much smaller and therefore had limited statistical power to detect subtle or moderate effects. (Springer)

The 2015 programme changed that.

There were more vessels.

There was more seismic activity.

There were many more observations.

And the study had substantially greater ability to detect changes that a smaller dataset might miss.

The result was scientifically awkward but important.

Better monitoring did not merely validate mitigation.

It revealed responses that less powerful monitoring had struggled to measure.

That is not a failure of science.

It is exactly what more informative science is supposed to do.

10. But whale density was also being shaped by food

Any attempt to attribute every movement in 2015 to industrial sound would be contradicted by the same research.

Whales congregated strongly around the mouth of Piltun Bay and in other areas associated with favourable feeding conditions.

Their density increased through much of the early season before declining after early August.

And density was significantly related to the energetic value of several prey groups. (Springer)

Other research in the same 2022 collection found unusual use of areas farther offshore and considered whether concentrations of high-energy sand lance could help explain those distributions.

The modelling authors explicitly acknowledged that incomplete spatial and temporal information about prey limited the precision with which some habitat patterns could be reproduced. (Springer)

So there were at least two simultaneous forces shaping whale distribution.

Whales moved in response to what they wanted:

food.

And the evidence indicates that they also changed behaviour and local distribution in response to what they were exposed to:

industrial activity and noise.

The scientific challenge was separating one from the other.

11. Then comes the apparent contradiction: reproduction did not collapse

If behavioural disturbance reduced feeding opportunities, the ultimate conservation question was whether whales lost enough energy to affect survival or reproduction.

A separate 2022 study attempted to bridge that gap using a stochastic dynamic programming bioenergetics model.

The model allowed simulated pregnant whales to move among feeding areas, respond to disturbance and compensate by feeding elsewhere.

Its result was considerably more reassuring than the behavioural findings.

Under the actual 2015 acoustic-disturbance scenario, predicted reproductive success and broad habitat use were broadly similar with and without disturbance.

The researchers described the effect of disturbance on predicted reproductive rate as no-to-little. (Springer)

That finding is not inconsistent with whales changing behaviour.

It answers a different question.

A whale can interrupt feeding, travel to another location and resume feeding — exactly as the observed individual did — without necessarily losing enough seasonal energy to impair reproduction.

The bioenergetic model was designed to examine whether such compensatory behaviour could prevent short-term disturbance becoming a demographic consequence.

For 2015, it generally predicted that it could.

12. Fourteen calves appeared the next year

Field observations gave the modelling exercise a particularly important reality check.

Researchers identified 14 new calves in the Sakhalin feeding areas in 2016.

Eleven calves had been identified in 2015.

Depending on how the pool of females potentially capable of being pregnant in 2015 was defined, the study calculated an observed successful reproductive rate ranging from approximately 0.64 to 0.88. (Springer)

That is a powerful counterweight to any claim that the 2015 seismic season demonstrably caused widespread reproductive failure.

It did not.

At least 14 calves were observed the following season.

But that fact cannot be turned into proof that disturbance was irrelevant either.

The modelling study itself stresses uncertainty about the number and identity of reproductive females and limitations in assumptions about habitat use and prey distribution. (Springer)

Science again refuses the convenient binary answer.

13. “No population effect proved” is not the same as “no biological cost”

The behavioural researchers went further than simply documenting movement.

They considered what repeated interruption could mean if it accumulated.

Earlier bioenergetics work had suggested that sufficient loss of feeding opportunity could, in theory, affect pregnancy success.

But the 2022 behavioural paper explicitly said it remained unknown how often particular individuals — including pregnant females — were repeatedly disturbed, and whether the observed responses resulted in biologically significant consequences for growth, survival or reproduction. (Springer)

That is the boundary of the evidence.

Inside the boundary:

behaviour changed.

local density changed.

industrial sound was statistically associated with those changes.

Outside the boundary:

proof that the 2015 programme caused population decline.

proof that whales suffered reproductive failure.

proof of lasting physiological injury.

The distinction is not semantic.

It is the difference between an observed response and a demonstrated conservation consequence.

14. The population was recovering at the same time

In September 2016, IUCN published what, on its face, was very good news.

It reported that the population feeding off the Russian Far East had grown at approximately 3–4% per year, from an estimated 115 animals in 2004 to 174 in 2015.

IUCN also credited Sakhalin Energy with making important efforts during the preceding 12 years to limit the effects of its operations, while warning that industry activity remained a threat. (IUCN)

In 2018, the population’s IUCN Red List classification was changed from Critically Endangered to Endangered.

IUCN reiterated the 3–4% annual growth figure when it renewed the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel in 2019, while stressing that continued cooperation across oil and gas, fisheries, shipping and other industries remained necessary. (IUCN)

That long-term recovery is real and important.

But it does not erase the 2015 behavioural findings.

A population can increase while individuals still respond to industrial disturbance.

Equally, evidence of behavioural response does not prove that the disturbance prevented population recovery.

Both statements can be true.

That is why population trajectory is a poor substitute for direct impact monitoring.

15. The Red List change itself needs a qualification

There is another reason for caution.

The 2022 behavioural study noted that the later IUCN status assessment incorporated information from both Sakhalin and Kamchatka.

It also recorded that the population would still have met the more severe threshold if assessment were restricted to animals observed only off Sakhalin because the number of reproductive females remained low. (Springer)

So the 2018 change from Critically Endangered to Endangered was significant.

It was not a declaration that the population was secure.

Nor did it mean that the feeding grounds had ceased to require protection.

IUCN continued the WGWAP process and, in 2018, separately warned that western gray whales faced very high entanglement risk from coastal salmon nets as well as continuing pressures from oil and gas development. (IUCN)

The conservation problem had expanded beyond Shell long before the Shell-related problem disappeared.

16. Shell’s own 2015 report was more careful than a “no impact” claim

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s authenticated Sustainability Report 2015 deserves to be read alongside the later papers.

Shell said it and IUCN had worked together since 2004 to minimise the effects of operations on western gray whales.

It said that, under WGWAP guidance, the company had worked to reduce the effects of operations on whales and their habitat.

Shell highlighted the fact that Sakhalin Energy was the only energy company operating at Sakhalin in 2015 with an IUCN independent observer on the team implementing seismic monitoring and mitigation.

Crucially, the report said the Panel would continue to examine the impact of oil and gas development following the 2015 season. (Shell)

Those verbs matter.

Minimise.

Reduce.

Examine.

Shell’s own authenticated report did not say that the operation created no disturbance.

The later science shows why such wording would have been difficult to sustain.

17. The research itself was peer reviewed — but it was not financially detached from industry

The 2022 papers should not be misdescribed as wholly independent research funded without operator involvement.

The behavioural study acknowledges financial, logistical and safety-management support from Exxon Neftegas Limited.

One of its authors, the late Rodger H. Melton, was affiliated with ExxonMobil Exploration Company. (Springer)

The density paper makes the same acknowledgement of Exxon Neftegas financial, logistical and safety support and likewise lists Melton’s ExxonMobil affiliation. (Springer)

The broader paper describing the 2015 mitigation and impact-assessment programme states that Exxon Neftegas funded preparation of that publication, and several authors were affiliated with ExxonMobil. It also records anonymous peer review and editorial review. (Springer)

Those facts do not invalidate the findings.

They belong in the provenance record.

Indeed, they make one feature of the published results especially noteworthy.

Research supported by an operator did not conclude that mitigation had eliminated behavioural responses.

The papers reported statistically detectable effects.

That is precisely why research provenance should be disclosed rather than used automatically either to dismiss or to sanctify a result.

18. WGWAP’s role also needs to be kept distinct

The Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel was not a court.

It was not the Russian environmental regulator.

And it did not possess legal power to prohibit the 2015 surveys.

It was an IUCN-convened scientific advisory mechanism.

The recovered WGWAP archive shows that the process eventually ran for 17 years and produced more than 600 formal recommendations, principally concerning the oil and gas industry and associated regulators. Its final meeting took place in November 2021. (IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group)

An independent evaluation later recorded that WGWAP’s May 2015 Statement of Concern represented one of those occasions when ordinary individual recommendations were considered insufficient to express the Panel’s level of concern. (IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group)

That history makes the 2022 science particularly valuable.

It provides evidence against which the Panel’s precautionary warnings can actually be tested.

Not vindicated in every detail.

Not disproved.

Tested.

19. The old English court record still supplies the historical backdrop

The British High Court had encountered the gray-whale issue years before the 2015 seismic season.

In Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin), Mr Justice Mitting recorded that proposed British financial support concerned a Sakhalin offshore development in which Shell had originally held a majority interest.

The judgment noted the potentially serious consequences of the development for western gray-whale habitat and feeding grounds.

The actual case concerned access to environmental information surrounding proposed UK export-credit support, not scientific adjudication of seismic effects. (vLex)

The court did not determine whether the 2015 surveys were safe.

It did not establish acoustic thresholds.

It did not find that Shell caused whale injury.

Its relevance here is narrower and historical.

By the time scientists began collecting the extraordinary 2015 dataset, the importance of western gray-whale habitat had already been part of British governmental and judicial records for years.

Documentary Findings Established

The 2015 Sakhalin season produced an unusually large dataset covering whale distribution, individual behaviour, acoustic exposure and prey conditions. The density study used more than 10,000 shore-based scans; the behavioural study analysed 1,270 tracks and 401 focal follows; acoustic monitoring included 40 underwater recorders. (Springer)

After accounting for important natural and spatial variables, higher cumulative vessel sound exposure was statistically associated with lower local whale density over both shorter and longer exposure windows. Higher cumulative seismic exposure was likewise associated with lower density, with relationships detected over two-hour and three-day periods. (Springer)

Individual whales also altered movement and respiration in relation to vessel proximity and sound exposure. The researchers documented changes including speed, direction, reorientation, respiration interval, surface blow rate and dive behaviour. (Springer)

The behavioural paper concluded that the mitigation regime did not eliminate short-term behavioural responses. (Springer)

Separate bioenergetic modelling nevertheless found no-to-little predicted effect on reproductive rate under the 2015 disturbance scenario, and 14 calves were identified during the following feeding season in 2016. (Springer)

The wider population was increasing during this period: IUCN reported an estimated rise from 115 animals in 2004 to 174 in 2015, approximately 3–4% per year, and the population was subsequently reclassified from Critically Endangered to Endangered in 2018. (IUCN)

Scientifically Observed — Causation Limits

The density relationships are statistical associations derived from observational data in a complex real-world environment, not a controlled laboratory experiment.

The researchers attempted to account for major natural influences including season, geography, water depth and prey availability. Those variables themselves explained substantial portions of whale distribution. (Springer)

Multiple seismic programmes, support vessels, fishing vessels and other maritime activities contributed to the 2015 soundscape.

Consequently, it would be incorrect to attribute every documented behavioural or distributional response specifically to Sakhalin Energy.

Likewise, reduced local density should not be converted into a claim that whales permanently abandoned their Sakhalin feeding grounds.

The data explicitly show that some whales remained during relatively high exposure and that animals could return after exposure diminished. (Springer)

Shell and Industry Position in the Documentary Record

Shell’s 2015 Sustainability Report presented the IUCN relationship as an environmental partnership intended to minimise impacts, emphasised WGWAP guidance and highlighted Sakhalin Energy’s use of an IUCN Independent Observer. It also acknowledged that scientific examination of oil and gas impacts would continue. (Shell)

IUCN itself subsequently gave Sakhalin Energy significant credit for efforts to reduce operational effects while simultaneously warning that industrial activity continued to pose risks to the recovering population. (IUCN)

The 2022 science does not justify rewriting either position into an absolute.

It does not show that mitigation was pointless.

It does show that mitigation did not make behavioural response disappear.

Not Established

It is not established that the 2015 seismic season caused a decline in the western gray-whale population.

It is not established that the 2015 activity caused widespread reproductive failure.

It is not established by these studies that seismic exposure caused permanent hearing damage or other physical injury to the whales.

It is not established that Sakhalin Energy or Shell was responsible for all of the industrial sound to which animals were exposed.

It is not established that the later increase in population occurred because of WGWAP, Shell or Sakhalin Energy’s mitigation measures.

And the population’s improvement in conservation status does not establish that industrial disturbance was biologically irrelevant.

Commentary

This may be one of the most instructive files in the entire Sakhalin archive.

For years the public argument tended towards two incompatible narratives.

One said that sophisticated mitigation demonstrated environmentally responsible offshore development.

The other said that industrial seismic activity beside the feeding grounds of an endangered whale population was inherently unacceptable.

The 2015 evidence does not fit comfortably into either narrative.

The mitigation system mattered.

Shutdown criteria mattered.

Scheduling mattered.

Acoustic modelling mattered.

Observers mattered.

The extensive monitoring programme mattered enormously.

And yet the whales still responded.

That is not surprising.

Mitigation is not a force field.

Its purpose is to reduce risk and disturbance, not to make a seismic vessel acoustically invisible.

The more interesting question is what happened after the response.

If a whale interrupted feeding, moved a short distance and successfully compensated later, the demographic cost might be negligible.

If the same whale were repeatedly disturbed during a constrained feeding season and could not recover the lost energy, the consequence could be much greater.

The 2015 data recorded the first part of that chain with considerable precision.

The modelling attempted to calculate the second.

For that particular year, the population-level picture was reassuring.

Reproduction did not collapse.

The population continued its wider recovery.

But a reassuring demographic outcome does not retrospectively convert measurable disturbance into no disturbance.

That is the central documentary point.

There is also an institutional lesson.

A company could have commissioned only enough monitoring to demonstrate compliance.

Instead, the combined 2015 research programme generated enough information to demonstrate that compliance and biological response can coexist.

That is scientifically valuable.

It is also uncomfortable for corporate communications departments, because “the mitigation plan was implemented” fits neatly into a sustainability report while “the animals still changed their behaviour, but we cannot demonstrate a population-level consequence” does not fit quite so neatly.

Yet the second formulation is closer to what the evidence ultimately showed.

There is one final irony.

WGWAP had been concerned before the survey that whales might move away from preferred feeding areas.

Years later, peer-reviewed analysis did indeed detect reductions in local density associated with cumulative industrial sound.

But those same years also produced a growing whale population and enough calves to make a simple catastrophe narrative untenable.

The scientists had not discovered that one side was right and the other wrong.

They had discovered something harder:

impact is not a binary condition.

A whale can be disturbed without being killed.

A feeding area can experience displacement without being abandoned.

A mitigation programme can work without eliminating response.

And a recovering population can still require protection from cumulative industrial pressure.

That is what the 2015 experiment eventually revealed.

Source Record

The principal behavioural paper is Glenn Gailey et al., “Western gray whale behavioral response to seismic surveys during their foraging season,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Volume 194, Article 740, published 18 October 2022. It records the 1,270 tracks, 401 focal follows, acoustic exposure data, statistically significant behavioural responses and the conclusion that mitigation did not eliminate short-term behavioural response. (Springer)

Gailey et al. — Western gray whale behavioral response to seismic surveys during their foraging season

The principal distribution paper is Glenn Gailey et al., “Gray whale density during seismic surveys near their Sakhalin feeding ground,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Volume 194, Article 739, published 18 October 2022. It analyses more than 10,000 shore-based scans and reports declining local whale density associated with increased cumulative seismic and vessel sound after controlling for major natural and habitat variables. (Springer)

Gailey et al. — Gray whale density during seismic surveys near their Sakhalin feeding ground

The supporting bioenergetics paper is Lisa Schwarz et al., “Gray whale habitat use and reproductive success during seismic surveys near their feeding grounds: comparing state-dependent life history models and field data,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Volume 194, Article 733, published 18 October 2022. It found broadly similar reproductive-success predictions with and without the 2015 acoustic-disturbance scenario and compared those predictions with field observations, including the 14 calves identified in 2016. (Springer)

Schwarz et al. — Gray whale habitat use and reproductive success during seismic surveys

The programme-level scientific paper is Lisanne Aerts et al., “Seismic surveys near gray whale feeding areas off Sakhalin Island, Russia: assessing impact and mitigation effectiveness,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 2022. It documents the 2015 mitigation architecture, monitoring strategy and the relationship between behavioural, distributional, acoustic and bioenergetic studies. (Springer)

Aerts et al. — Assessing impact and mitigation effectiveness in the 2015 Sakhalin surveys

The contemporaneous warning is the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel Statement of Concern with respect to proposed seismic activity on the Sakhalin shelf in 2015, dated 8 May 2015. It records WGWAP’s information concerns and its scientific apprehension about the cumulative scale of the planned seismic season. (IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group)

WGWAP — Statement of Concern, 8 May 2015

Sakhalin Energy’s contemporaneous response records the company’s operational reasons for proceeding, its engagement with WGWAP and the purpose of the Piltun-Astokh 4-D survey. (IUCN Cetacean Specialist Group)

Sakhalin Energy — Response to the May 2015 WGWAP Statement

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s authenticated Sustainability Report 2015 records Shell’s relationship with IUCN, its stated aim of minimising impacts on western gray whales and Sakhalin Energy’s use of an IUCN Independent Observer during the 2015 seismic programme. (Shell)

Royal Dutch Shell plc — Sustainability Report 2015

IUCN’s 3 September 2016 statement records the estimated population increase from 115 animals in 2004 to 174 in 2015 while warning that industrial activity continued to pose a threat. (IUCN)

IUCN — Western gray whales recovering, but industry still poses a threat, 3 September 2016

IUCN’s 24 April 2019 announcement records the 2018 change in conservation status from Critically Endangered to Endangered and the continuation of WGWAP work on cumulative impacts and underwater noise. (IUCN)

IUCN — Scientific panel to continue advising on endangered gray whales, 24 April 2019

The historical judicial record remains Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin). It is used here only to establish that the sensitivity of western gray-whale habitat formed part of the British governmental and legal record surrounding Sakhalin II years before the 2015 survey. (vLex)

Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth — [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin)

Research-provenance note: Several papers in the 2022 special collection acknowledge financial, logistical or safety support from Exxon Neftegas Limited, and some authors held ExxonMobil affiliations. This is disclosed here as part of the provenance of the evidence. The papers were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and, importantly, reported measurable whale responses rather than concluding that industrial effects were absent. (Springer)

Archive disclaimer: The evidence distinguishes detectable behavioural and distributional responses from demonstrated population-level injury. No court judgment cited here determines the biological consequences of the 2015 seismic programme, and no population trend is attributed solely to Shell, Sakhalin Energy, Exxon Neftegas, WGWAP or any single conservation measure.

Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Next Archive File SLF-2007-055 — The Sakhalin Papers XLV: From Critically Endangered to Endangered — Who Gets Credit for the Recovery?

In September 2016, IUCN announced a striking figure.

115 whales in 2004.

174 in 2015.

An estimated annual increase of 3–4%. (IUCN)

Two years later, the conservation classification changed from Critically Endangered to Endangered.

For Shell and IUCN, the Sakhalin collaboration could now be presented as evidence that independent scientific oversight and industrial development were capable of coexisting.

But the story was less simple than the headline.

The Red List reassessment drew upon a changing understanding of whales seen away from Sakhalin.

The number of reproductive females remained small.

Fishing-net entanglement emerged as a major threat.

Other oil companies were not bound into the WGWAP relationship in the same way as Sakhalin Energy.

And population recovery itself could not establish how much credit belonged to the Panel, to Shell’s mitigation measures, to international whaling protection, to changing survey knowledge — or simply to the biology of a remnant population recovering from historic exploitation.

SLF-2007-055 will examine the celebrated recovery claim, the evidence behind the Red List change, what WGWAP could legitimately claim to have achieved, and the limits of using a growing whale population as a corporate environmental success story. (IUCN)

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 11 SEPTEMBER 2026 was first posted on September 11, 2026 at 8:12 pm.
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Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department headquarters in Santa Fe to oppose Project Jupiter’s air pollution permit on August 28, 2026.

Project Jupiter, if built, would lock New Mexico into more oil and gas dependence for decades. Tell state regulators to say no to this air pollution permit.

SIGN THE PETITION

Oracle, OpenAI, and their partners want to build a massive data center near Santa Teresa, in Doña Ana County. It’s a $165 billion project. At first, they planned to power it with gas turbines and diesel generators. After people pushed back, they switched to something called fuel cells and called it clean energy. It is not since the energy for the fuel cells still comes from fossil fuels.

The fuel cells for this project would still run on natural gas, mostly methane. Fuel cells use an electro-chemical process to turn methane into electricity at high temperature (~800°C) but without combustion. The methane fuel is converted to hydrogen inside the fuel cell and emits CO2 as the byproduct. Since methane, also known as natural gas, is the fuel, upstream methane leaks and impacts from fracking and produced water are as bad as a gas plant per unit of fuel. They even need a new gas pipeline that doesn’t exist yet, and that state regulators already turned down once. This project is anything but clean. In fact:

• This would be one of the largest fuel cell facilities ever built, anywhere;
• The project is expected to release about 10 million tons of pollution every year. That’s roughly as much as all of New Mexico’s biggest cities combined;
• The gas pipeline would cross rivers, streams, undisturbed desert habitat and run nearby residents and water sources.

New Mexico has worked hard to clean up its air and hold the oil and gas industry accountable. Approving this permit would undo a lot of that work, right when we should be investing in wind and solar, not new gas extraction that puts frontline communities and the climate at risk.

What you can do

The New Mexico Environment Department is expected to hold a hearing for this permit, but the New Mexico Supreme Court has temporarily halted the permit proceedings, leaving the date and next steps uncertain. 

People have raised concerns about the fairness of this process, including hearing date changes, fake comments being submitted to NMED and restricting access to the administrative permit records. 

1. Sign the petition. Tell NMED to reject this permit until developers can meet sustainable and community drive guardrail protections.
2. Share this page. People deserve to know what’s being built in their home state.
3. Attend the hearing. Your voice matters. Make sure you are subscribed to our email list for updates on how you can participate at the NMED hearing.

SIGN THE PETITION

The post Project Jupiter in New Mexico: A Would-be Fossil Fuel Polluter for Decades to Come appeared first on Earthworks.

Hilary Swank letter urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign diaper ingredients disclosure bill Anthony Lacey September 11, 2026

Attached is actor and children’s health advocate Hilary Swank’s letter urging California Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign AB 1901, a diaper ingredients disclosure bill.

File Download Document hilary-swank-letter-to-gov-newsom-ab-1901.pdf Areas of Focus Family Health Women's Health Children’s Health Toxic Chemicals California Guest Authors Hilary Swank September 11, 2026

By Melissa Ostroff, Pennsylvania State Field and Policy Manager, and Anaïs Peterson, Petrochemicals Campaigner at Earthworks

On August 18th, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced a new executive order on data centers. This executive order, which the Governor called the strictest data center policy in the country, is a mixed bag that leaves many frontline communities still concerned about what comes next. 

Even though it neglects to include the most important policy tool available, a moratorium, this executive order still represents some wins for communities who have been demanding leadership from a Governor who had initially welcomed data centers with open arms. It addresses one of the largest concerns around transparency in data center development as it prohibits the use of non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, in connection with data center projects. In addition to increasing transparency, the executive order also removes any existing data center projects from permit fast tracking and bars them from eligibility in the future.  And while this announcement falls short in many other ways, it shows the power of community organizing across the state to create pressure and deliver results in Harrisburg.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signs an executive order on data centers on August 18, 2026, calling it the strictest policy of its kind in the country. Frontline communities, however, remain concerned about what the order means in practice. Image credit: AP

Through the new order, Governor Shapiro also attempts to protect Pennsylvania ratepayers from the utility price hikes often caused by data centers connecting to the grid through a strategy known as bring your own power (BYOP). While BYOP may reduce the impacts of data centers on utility bills, it can also lead tech companies to build their own gas plants to power these projects. This risk is increased by the weak “clean firm” requirements laid out in this executive order. 

As part of the requirements, developers would have to source a growing percentage of their energy from “clean firm” resources located within Pennsylvania. But “clean firm” energy isn’t as clean as it sounds. In fact, the category includes nuclear power and fossil fuels paired with carbon capture alongside real renewables like solar, geothermal and hydropower. The mandatory schedule starts small, requiring just 10% clean firm energy. It then climbs to 32% by 2035. The problem is that Pennsylvania already gets 34% of its energy from clean firm sources today. With this context this “requirement” actually falls short of where we already stand. 

By labeling fossil fuels as “clean” and setting a target we already passed back in 2025, the Shapiro administration is sending a clear message: pollution is acceptable in Pennsylvania communities. The Shapiro administration cannot trade utility price hikes for environmental pollution and call that a win for Pennsylvania. What Pennsylvanians avoid paying in utility bills they may end up paying in higher health care costs. The fossil fuel infrastructure used to power these projects leads to increased rates of cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease, and many other deadly and disabling conditions. And pollution has a cost, too – in the form of poor health, rising healthcare bills, and shortened lives. A stronger data center policy would protect Pennsylvanians both from price increases and pollution.

Governor Shapiro has directed Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection to develop new regulations addressing the cumulative environmental impacts of data centers, including emissions from multiple backup generators.

But there is one potential bright spot relative to pollution: Governor Shapiro has directed DEP to develop new regulations around the cumulative environmental impacts of data centers, including the impact of multiple backup generators. We welcome the consideration of cumulative impacts as part of regulations around data centers and other polluting facilities, and look forward to the opportunity for community members and public health experts to speak on this topic.

Governor Shapiro also clarified the role local governments play in data center development, emphasizing that his administration will not consider permits for projects that have not been approved at the local level. We applaud this nod towards community consent, but questions remain about what kind of local opposition will qualify for this protection. People living and working in Pennsylvania know implementation can be complex, and additional clarification is needed to help communities understand how this executive order will impact their own neighborhoods.  

This executive order does not address the existing gaps in ordinances and zoning primarily in Pennsylvania’s at-risk rural communities that would empower them to say no to data centers. Local governments are voting to approve data centers simply to avoid lawsuits even when their constituents are showing up and demanding they vote no. Currently approximately 32% of the commonwealth is unzoned leaving them unprotected if and when big tech comes knocking. However, it is unclear from the remarks made by Governor Shapiro and DEP Secretary Shirley if land use permits also fall under this executive order. If they do, a larger portion of the commonwealth may have some protections. 

While this executive order makes some much needed progress towards protections it leaves the strongest protective measure still on the table: a moratorium. The call from communities across Pennsylvania has been clear. The best way to protect our commonwealth from the impact of data centers, whether it is rate hikes or increased air pollution, remains a moratorium on data center development.

The post Governor Shapiro’s Data Center Executive Order Shows Power of Community Organizing – And the Work Ahead appeared first on Earthworks.

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

Join the Clean Air Council in participating in the Pretzel Pedal Challenge! Log your bike rides from September 1-30 to automatically earn points that qualify you for discounts and prizes! Create a Share-A-Ride profile to join!

Image Source: NBC Philadelphia

NBC Philadelphia: Speeding, double parking fuel safety concerns on East Girard Avenue – East Girard Avenue in Fishtown is an extremely busy corridor, and advocates held a walkthrough this week to push for safety improvements for pedestrians, drivers, cyclists, and transit riders. Issues facing this corridor include speeding drivers, double-parked cars, illegal turns, and pedestrians crossing outside of crosswalks. Improvements could include dedicated turning zones, pedestrian infrastructure, curb extensions, and more traffic signs.

Image Source: PA Trolley Museum

Mass Transit: Off the Beaten Path: Pittsburgh’s streetcar past keeps rolling at Pennsylvania Trolley Museum – Children can enter the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum for free throughout September. The museum, located in Washington County, has more than 50 trolleys and streetcars on display. Visitors can ride working trolleys along 4 miles of track. Pittsburgh’s trolley system dates back to the late 1800s, and visitors can learn all about that history and more.

Image Source: Metro Philadelphia

Metro Philadelphia: Gusset Plate Project brings art under the El in Kensington – Murals painted by residents over the past few years were installed onto triangular gusset plates that connect columns and beams holding up the Market-Frankford Line along Kensington Avenue. The Kensington and Harrowgate neighborhoods have received a little more color due to the mural plates, which can be found between Huntington and Tioga stations.

Other Stories

PARK(ing) DAY PHL: PARK(ing) Day is September 18, 2026

Pennsylvania Capital-Star: The Pennsylvania Turnpike is added to Oklahoma’s PikePass system

New Jersey State Democrats: SINGLETON, CCSNJ, SJTA TO ANNOUNCE NEW MICROTRANSIT SHUTTLE IN BURLCO

Virgina Mercury: Amtrak to suspend Virginia-to-D.C. service for critical track upgrades Oct. 16–26

For Paula Swaner Sargetakis, co-owner of Frog Bench Farms in Salt Lake City, Utah, farming began with curiosity. She grew up on her family’s ranch, spending countless hours exploring the natural world. The first time she saw tree frogs, she recalls falling in love with the animals and collecting them in a bucket with leaves, rocks, and water to take home.

“There were no frogs left in the pot by the time we got home, because there was no lid on the pot,” says Sargetakis, joking that “we did have to get rid of that car.” Experiences like this, and generations of family gardeners before her, planted the seeds for what would become a career in farming.

Today, Sargetakis and her husband co-own Frog Bench Farms—a name inspired in part by her lifelong love of frogs. Using regenerative practices adapted to an urban setting, the small, 1.5-acre farm grows produce for local markets, community programs, and 22 restaurants in the Salt Lake City area.

When Sargetakis and her husband searched for land to build a farm, they looked near schools, knowing they wanted their farm to also serve as a classroom to teach students where their food comes from.

“They’re always surprised that there’s a farm right next door,” says Sargetakis. “But there’s joy in it, and they will ask questions, and they learn.”

When children visit, they are sometimes very nervous to taste unfamiliar vegetables like microgreens, she adds. But like in her own childhood, curiosity usually wins, “and most of them like it.”

Alongside education, reducing waste is central to Sargetakis’s work at Frog Bench Farms: “Everything we grow on site, we don’t waste anything.”

The farm donates surplus produce to the University of Utah’s student pantry and the Utah Food Bank. Crops that aren’t sold fresh are made into teas and other value-added products, while visitors learn how to preserve food using affordable tools available at local hardware stores.

That philosophy reflects Sargetakis’ broader understanding of sustainability—not simply protecting natural resources but strengthening local food systems and sharing knowledge. At the farm, she collects water, sources ingredients locally for value-added products whenever possible, and continually looks for ways to keep resources circulating within the community.

Running a small farm, however, comes with difficult financial realities. Frog Bench Farms is committed to paying employees a living wage, even though doing so adds another layer of economic pressure to an already challenging business.

“You don’t make money farming, you make it in other sides of the product,” says Sargetakis.

Sargetakis says diversification, education, and community partnerships make it possible to continue farming while staying true to the farm’s values. Ultimately, though, she hopes more people come to understand what farming truly requires, and why it matters.

“I’m hoping one day… [that] people understand and appreciate the hard work that goes into farming and how much fun we have doing it,” says Sargetakis.

On a small urban farm surrounded by classrooms and city streets, Sargetakis aims to show that agriculture doesn’t need large acreage to make a lasting impact. For her, all it takes is an acre and a half, a handful of curious students, and someone willing to keep getting their hands in the dirt.

This article is part of Food Tank’s ongoing Farmer Friday series, produced in partnership with Niman Ranch, a champion for independent U.S. family farmers. The series highlights the stories of farmers working toward a more sustainable, equitable food system. Niman Ranch partners with over 500 small-scale U.S. family farmers and is committed to preserving rural agricultural communities and their way of life.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Paula Swaner Sargetakis

The post Growing Food, Community, and Curiosity in Salt Lake City appeared first on Food Tank.

In a bright, spacious factory on the outskirts of Lagos, young engineers in overalls work their way along the production line, carefully inspecting the shimmery blue solar cells that turn sunlight into electricity.

Quality checks completed, the finished solar panels are loaded onto forklifts and taken to a warehouse – ready for delivery to buyers across Nigeria and in neighbouring West African countries. Each panel is labelled “Made in Nigeria”.

But for Emmanuel Agbola, operations manager at Nigerian solar company LPV Technologies, the company’s mission goes beyond quality control and meeting customer orders.

“We are looking at addressing the immediate power needs of Nigeria,” Agbola told Climate Home News in a quiet room away from the steady hum of machinery on the factory floor, where production began last year.

That is no small task. About four out of 10 Nigerians – more than 85 million people – still lack reliable access to grid electricity, according to Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency.

An engineer works on a solar module inside LPV factory, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) An engineer works on a solar module inside LPV factory, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

LPV Technologies is among a handful of startups making headway on the nation’s bold ambitions to build a domestic solar panel manufacturing industry, as solar becomes the go-to choice for Nigerian businesses and households fed up with frequent blackouts.

Nigeria’s national grid has collapsed about 22 times during the last two years due to transmission constraints, gas shortages and ageing infrastructure.

That is exactly why local solar panel manufacturing matters, according to Agbola.

“One of our slogans is ‘Make the sun pay for your bills’,” he said.

Solar transforms life for homes and businesses

Nigeria has become one of Africa’s fastest-growing markets for increasingly affordable solar systems, which are providing more reliable and cheaper electricity for homes and workplaces than the fragile power grid.

Solar panels installed across rooftops of shops in Wuse Market, Abuja, July, 2026 (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Solar panels installed across rooftops of shops in Wuse Market, Abuja, July, 2026 (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Nigeria’s rapid solar adoption is being met mostly by small-scale solar installations which have helped bring the country’s total cumulative solar capacity to about 6 gigawatts (GW), according to a report by research provider BloombergNEF.

But almost every panel installed on homes, factories and public buildings across the country is imported – the vast majority from China – something the government wants to change.

“We are preparing to produce in this country the solar technologies that the entire continent will use,” President Bola Tinubu told a group of Chinese investors in 2024.

“Nigeria is a huge market for solar panels. Africa is a major consumer of solar technologies. I do not see why these panels and batteries cannot be produced here,” he said.

Two years on, that ambition is starting to bear fruit.

Not far from LPV’s factory, in the Agege neighbourhood of Lagos, workers are putting the finishing touches to a new commercial-scale veterinary vaccine cold-storage facility.

Up on the roof, 100 of LPV’s “Made in Nigeria” solar panels have been fixed into position. 

Once operational, the panels and attached battery storage will provide round-the-clock electricity for offices, laboratories and cold-storage rooms at the site, helping to keep millions of vaccine doses safely refrigerated even when the national grid fails.

“This will never go off – all year round,” said the civil engineer overseeing work at the site, pointing to the rooftop installation. “It’s off-grid – 24 hours, seven days; constant electricity to run these two cooling units.”

A worker looks over solar cells at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Government bets on local manufacturing

The Nigerian government wants solar power to play a central role in bridging the country’s electricity access gap, but it also wants the equipment that will drive that transition to be produced at home to create new jobs and reduce imports. That aligns with its wider Nigeria First industry policy.

Nigeria’s booming solar market is still overwhelmingly supplied by foreign-made panels. 

Last year, it imported about 2.9 million panels worth more than 400 billion naira ($295 million). More than 70% of them came from China, making Nigeria Africa’s second-largest importer of Chinese panels after South Africa. 

China dominates almost every stage of the global solar manufacturing supply chain and a series of government-led initiatives to kickstart local production have yet to make major headway.

More than a decade ago, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure established the country’s first government-backed solar panel factory in Karshi, Abuja. While successive upgrades have increased its production capacity to about 50 MW annually, the facility still supplies only a fraction of Nigeria’s growing demand.

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The government has since announced more ambitious projects, including a Renewable Energy Industrial Park in Nasarawa state, expected to manufacture solar cells, panels and batteries, and a solar module assembly plant under construction by the Energy Commission of Nigeria in Enugu. Neither project has yet begun commercial production.

Last year, the government also proposed restricting solar panel imports to encourage domestic manufacturing, though the idea was swiftly dropped.

Chinese imports dominate solar panel trade

The scale of Nigeria’s challenge is obvious during a visit to Alaba International Market in Lagos, one of Africa’s largest electronics markets and a solar retail hub where thousands of panels change hands every week.

One recent morning in June, cart pushers could be seen weaving their way between crowds of shoppers and traffic jams, their trolleys stacked high with loads of freshly imported solar panels.

Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and fossil fuel exports have been the cornerstone of the economy for decades. But in the bustling market, solar has become such a good business in recent years that traders call it “the new oil“.

Signs advertising solar energy solutions at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) A labourer pushes cart full of imported solar panels across a road in Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Signs advertising solar energy solutions at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) A labourer pushes cart full of imported solar panels across a road in Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Even so, few said they had ever seen panels made in Nigeria.

“Every panel we get is imported,” said wholesaler Ndubuisi Nwobodo, adding that it was the first time he had heard of panels being produced domestically.

At one of the market’s largest solar warehouses, manager Chidiebere Ani watched as workers unloaded another container of supplies from China. He said 95% of the warehouse’s stock of panels came from China.

China controls more than 80% of global manufacturing capacity, according to the International Energy Agency, spanning every stage of the supply chain, from polysilicon and wafers to solar cells and finished modules. 

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Meanwhile, production at the LPV factory in Lagos is running at about 180,000 panels per year, Agbola said.

“If we had 10 LPVs, we still won’t be able to meet [Nigeria’s] demand,” Agbola said. 

Even then, Nigerian producers face a tough contest on price. Imported 550-watt panels retail for about 150,000 naira ($110), the same price that LPV Technologies charges wholesalers.

Policy uncertainty seen as hurdle to investment

Nigeria has plentiful affordable labour and – with a population of roughly 240 million – room for market growth as the falling price of panels makes them accessible to more people.

Chinese firms increasingly see opportunities to build manufacturing partnerships with local businesses, said Susan Li, the founder of Chinese solar company Solar Run Energy.

“We have to grow the industry together,” she said, cautioning that foreign investment in the sector would hinge on stable government policies and a steady exchange rate.

Labourers unload a truck full of imported solar panels at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Labourers unload a truck full of imported solar panels at Alaba International Market, Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Last year’s short-lived proposal to ban panel imports, which was scrapped a month after it was floated, highlighted such investment concerns, said Wangari Muchiri, founder of Kenya-based RE.Think Energy.

“[One minute] solar imports were banned, and then they were not banned,” Muchiri said. 

“If investors come in and there is already a clear path such that everyone knows how tariffs and customs duties are handled, then businesses can plan for those costs,” she explained. “But when policies keep changing, the risk becomes much higher.”

Li said she believed that “as time goes by, [policies] will become more stable”.

Nigeria’s challenges to scale up production

While Nigeria is making its first panels, it does not yet have the industrial capacity to produce vital solar cell components such as polysilicon, wafers and ingots. 

At LPV, Agbola said having to import the components – up to 17 of them – eats into the company’s profit margins.

“When we combine [the cost of importing components] with other fixed-cost elements and we want to do our pricing, it becomes a big challenge for us in the market,” he said. 

Because cells are the main component in a solar panel, LPV’s senior brand and marketing manager Kabir Okehi said it would be “a huge relief” to produce them domestically and avoid the high shipping logistics costs associated with imports. It also takes imported solar cells between six weeks and two months to get to Nigeria.

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Many of the materials used in solar manufacturing – including silica, aluminium and steel – are available in Nigeria, but the country still lacks the technical know-how to turn them into higher-value components, experts say. 

“What is missing in our local production is knowledge transfer,” said Mustapha Abdullahi, director-general of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, a government body responsible for strategic national energy policy planning and coordination.

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He said Nigeria is still learning about the technologies needed to make solar cells domestically, with research institutes experimenting with materials such as graphene and production methods that could eventually support upstream manufacturing.

“We’re still in the pilot stages, doing reverse engineering to see how things are done,” he told Climate Home News.

Companies struggle to access startup capital

Another major challenge for homegrown solar manufacturing is finance, Abdullahi said, adding that several Nigerian companies have expressed interest in manufacturing solar panels, but many struggle to secure the capital needed to establish production lines.

The government has tried to bridge that gap by connecting local companies with international financiers, while offering incentives to prospective investors, he said.

Last year, Nigeria announced a partnership with Chinese solar giant LONGi to establish a 1,000 MW manufacturing facility in the country. The agreement, Abdullahi said, is intended to accelerate technology transfer and help Nigeria expand domestic production far beyond its current assembly capacity of roughly 300 MW of solar panels annually.

That is equivalent to 545,000 panels – of about 550 watts each – per year.

A conveyor belt producing solar cells at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Solar cells on a production line at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) A conveyor belt producing solar cells at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Solar cells on a production line at the LPV factory in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Production will need to increase nearly ten-fold, Abdullahi estimated, to meet projected future demand.

As new investments and joint ventures start to yield results, that might be possible, he said.

“Nigeria can even be the solar panel hub globally, not just for Africa, and compete well even with China,” he added.

China as a partner, not a rival

But Nigeria should not be aiming to compete with China, rather learning from it as it seeks to build up its solar industry ecosystem – from assembling imported components to eventually making more of them locally, said Godson Ikiebey, a renewable energy specialist at PwC Nigeria.

China did not become the world’s solar manufacturing giant overnight, Ikiebey said. It developed a long-term industrial strategy, invested heavily in manufacturing capacity and steadily climbed the value chain.

“For now, it’s good to have the ambition, but the ambition does not yet match the action,” Ikiebey added. 

China dominates global solar manufacturing not simply because it produces panels cheaply, RE.Think Energy’s CEO Muchiri said, but because it controls technology, supply chains and economies of scale built over decades.

Rather than trying to recreate that system from scratch, Nigeria should join forces with Chinese companies to accelerate technology transfer while developing its own workforce and manufacturing base, she said.

Building an African solar industry should also extend beyond Nigeria, with different countries potentially specialising in different parts of the value chain, fostering regional trade. “This is going to be a big opportunity to look at a regional expansion rather than just one country,” she added.

Chidiebere Ani, Foresolar manager, shows solar panels in the warehouse near the Alaba International Market in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Chidiebere Ani, Foresolar manager, shows solar panels in the warehouse near the Alaba International Market in Lagos (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

Bringing such plans to fruition will take time and the goals should be realistic, Chinese investor Li said.

Items such as frames and screws could eventually be produced in Nigeria, but more sophisticated components like solar cells would still need to be imported because their production requires highly automated factories and a stable electricity supply, she said.

“You grow step by step. If you look at the long term, if you grow the seed and water it today, you will get the harvest tomorrow,” Li said.

Clean energy jobs for the future workforce

When President Tinubu described his government’s solar hub plans to Chinese investors, he touted the country’s large, young workforce.

“The labour is cheaper. Our youths are vibrant and skilled. Our people are brilliant and adapt to new technology,” he said.

LPV’s factory in Lagos offers a glimpse of that vision.

Ibeimo Biobele explains the module production process inside the LPV factory floor in Ikotun, Lagos, Nigeria (Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News) Ibeimo Biobele explains the module production process inside the LPV factory floor in Ikotun, Lagos, Nigeria (Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

A graduate in petroleum engineering, Ibeimo Biobele, 28, had no experience in solar manufacturing when she arrived at the factory a year ago as a member of the National Youth Service Corps – Nigeria’s mandatory one-year national service programme.

Like many university-leavers, Biobele faced an uncertain job market.

More than 93% of Nigerians work in the informal economy, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, meaning there are few skilled jobs for graduates like Biobele.

Today, she works on the production line assembling panels and hopes more such jobs will become available for young Nigerians in the years to come.

“If we had more factories like this, more young engineers would have opportunities after school,” she said.

This article was made possible with support from Surge Africa and One World Media.

Main image: A man carries a solar panel on his head while unloading a truck in Lagos, Nigeria (Photo: Mansur Ibrahim/Climate Home News)

The post Made in Nigeria: The race to build an African solar industry from scratch appeared first on Climate Home News.

As the planet heats up, tundras are thawing, wetlands are fermenting, and forests are succumbing to larger and more frequent wildfires. The breakdown of these natural systems is unleashing huge volumes of emissions, further intensifying warming from the burning of fossil fuels. According to new research, such feedback loops could amplify human-driven warming by 20 to 30 percent.

Read more on E360 →

Janet Fleischman is an independent consultant with extensive experience in research, policy advocacy, and narrative storytelling. Jyotsna Uppal is a historian and narrative strategist, who supports individuals and organisations in change processes.

Global climate progress sits at the centre of an acute crisis, as the multilateral order that structured international climate cooperation for three decades frays at the seams.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from 66 United Nations and international organisations in early 2026, compounded by its exit from the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change itself, has launched a rupture in the governance architecture and the geopolitical consensus that made multilateral climate action conceivable.

Institutions have been stripped of authority, voluntary commitments left contingent on political will.

At this precarious moment, what can and should climate funders be doing?

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We recently examined the state of environmental multilateralism through an extensive literature review and interviews with climate leaders from around the world – policymakers, UN officials, regional actors, philanthropic leaders and advocates.

Their perspectives reinforced a sobering finding: more consequential than any single country’s efforts to undermine the multilateral system is the deeper question of whether that system is still fit for purpose.

Climate philanthropy must do more than fill gaps left by retreating governments; it must ask harder questions about whether gap-filling is the right role at all – and prepare to catalyse the emergence of something new.

Change will not come without pain.

As Sarah Millar, programme director at the Climate Emergency Collaboration Group, an international philanthropic network and strategic regranter, told us: “What we’re trying to do here is fundamentally rewire the global economy… it’s everything everywhere, all at once. And that’s really hard to do.”

Filling the gaps or leading change?

The multilateral climate system, for all its limitations, remains relatively intact. Countries other than the United States continue to submit national climate plans and participate in global negotiations. Yet participation is not the same as effectiveness – many commitments fall short of what’s needed.

Meanwhile, new regional, thematic and plurilateral coalitions are emerging; voluntary groupings of countries, cities, companies, and civil society organisations aligned around specific climate objectives are increasingly filling the action gap.

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Climate philanthropy has often responded to these gaps by substituting for absent public finance. Arunabha Ghosh, the founder and former CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a climate think-tank based in New Delhi, explained: “Philanthropy is having to fill in the gap of public finance where development assistance is failing.” But this instinct deserves scrutiny.

A more fundamental question is whether gap-filling remains the right approach. Does philanthropy keep a failing system limping along, propping up dysfunction – or does it spur transformation and catalyse what comes next? There is no neutrality here – philanthropy cannot pretend its choices are inconsequential. The question is which position advances the transformation the moment requires.

Compounding these strategic questions is a more immediate threat. As formal multilateralism struggles, the civil society actors who might fill the gap face mounting restrictions – a closing of civic space evident not just in the US but in India, Israel, Russia, Turkey, and elsewhere. In the US, the Trump administration has stepped up attacks on philanthropies, threatening legal investigations and the withdrawal of foundations’ tax-exempt status.

A protester holds a placard describing the election of Donald Trump as a ‘climate disaster’ during a demonstration in London. (Photo: SOPA Images) A protester holds a placard describing the election of Donald Trump as a ‘climate disaster’ during a demonstration in London. (Photo: SOPA Images)

For climate philanthropy specifically, there’s a particular risk: support for climate action is increasingly portrayed in some US conservative circles as anti-American.

Conservative actors who emphasise fossil fuels for manufacturing and energy security often equate backing renewables with pro-China stances, since China is the largest green technology manufacturer. Yet the economic evidence points the other way, with the clean energy transition already underway – and the perils of fossil fuel reliance further underscored by the war in Iran.

Winning back the narrative

Underlying all these gaps is a failure of narrative. The story of climate progress – and there is real progress to tell – is not being written by governments.

As Christiana Figueres, an international leader on climate change and the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, put it this way: “The story of progress is being written by a plethora of other stakeholders – subnationals, finance corporations, NGOs – all of whom are doing their thing together. They’re writing an amazing story, and nobody’s writing it and nobody’s reading it and nobody’s taking note of it.”

This storytelling also needs to be more integrated: climate can’t remain a siloed concern but must be linked to health, education, gender equity and migration. Philanthropy can help make these linkages legible to policymakers and the public – expanding the coalition of actors who see climate as central to their own agendas.

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Four directions stand out for catalytic philanthropic support in this fragmented landscape:

• Shift who gets supported, and convene diverse actors. New pathways are needed to support local communities, civil society coalitions, and subnational actors implementing national climate plans.
• Support compelling narratives and amplify affected voices. Listening to affected communities is critical to shaping a just transition that gives communities real agency over change.
• Engage the private sector differently. New financing instruments and blended finance opportunities require philanthropy to engage more strategically with private sector and corporate actors – not merely as funders but as partners to design how catalytic capital can flow.
• Take strategic risks. Philanthropy may need to fund approaches to implementation, finance, and technology that governments and financial institutions won’t support.

This is a precarious moment for multilateralism, civil society and the philanthropic organisations that sustain it.

But that complexity may also provide an opportunity. Philanthropy willing to ask harder questions, take greater risks, and invest in the connective tissue between issues may do more than keep a struggling system afloat.

To catalyse multilateral climate action, many philanthropies recognise that this is the time to deepen their reach. In the words of Ailun Yang, with the environment program at Bloomberg Philanthropies: “Our main way to engage in this is by supporting smart people and innovative ideas. Philanthropy doesn’t necessarily do these things ourselves, and that is really where our superpower is.”

This piece is adapted from a project conducted by Janet Fleischman and Jyotsna Uppal, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Environment Program; however, all the views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own.

The post With multilateralism in crisis, what’s next for climate philanthropy? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Zack to the future Channel News brendan 11th September 2026 Teaser Media