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Across much of the U.S., people have little way to know when the air they breathe turns dangerous.

Over recent decades, federal funding for public air monitoring has declined, the number of monitors has fallen, and much of the remaining equipment is aging or located far from major polluters.

Now, the stakes are rising: Wildfire smoke is reaching more communities, data centers are adding pollution, and climate-driven heat waves are worsening ozone levels. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has delayed and rolled back requirements meant to hold companies accountable for their emissions.

As the public monitoring system has weakened, communities have increasingly turned to an alternative: low-cost sensors they can use themselves. 

But a Floodlight investigation finds industry is moving to restrict that option, too.

A scientist discusses an air-monitoring car with Louisiana Environmental Action Network staff. The Trump administration canceled the group’s air monitoring grant last year. Zachary Kanzler for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network

Since 2024, lawmakers in Louisiana, Ohio, and Kentucky have passed strikingly similar bills — backed by chemical or manufacturing trade groups — that curb the use of community-collected data in enforcement actions.

The bills share a common thread: They block regulators from using air-quality data for enforcement purposes unless it meets EPA-approved standards. Similar bills in West Virginia have yet to pass. 

In case after case, proponents have made the same argument: Community monitoring isn’t reliable enough for regulatory enforcement. 

Yet when lawmakers in West Virginia offered a version of a bill designed to ensure accuracy, industry resisted. 

The bill “essentially codifies what we are trying to prevent,” an official at the chemical giant Chemours wrote in an internal email.

An early-warning system in decline

Thousands of small, often-unremarkable instruments serve as the nation’s early-warning system for dangerous air — detecting pollution that people can’t always see or smell.

Some sit inside shelters the size of garden sheds. Others are mounted on rooftops or tucked into fenced compounds. Together, these monitors measure pollutants ranging from ozone and carbon monoxide to carcinogens such as benzene and vinyl chloride.

The network grew out of the 1963 Clean Air Act and transformed the way the nation tracked air pollution, giving regulators data they could use to identify dangerous conditions and hold polluters accountable. Since then, air pollution has fallen dramatically across much of the U.S.

But today, the network is “showing its age,” said Chet Wayland, who led EPA’s Air Quality Assessment Division for nearly two decades. “And it’s getting smaller over time.”

For example:

• Leaks, termites, and ants plague monitoring stations in one state while officials in another have resorted to shopping on eBay for discontinued parts, according to a 2020 congressional watchdog report. 
• Adjusted for inflation, federal grants to support the network have fallen more than 35 percent over the past two decades, while the Trump administration tried unsuccessfully last year to eliminate them entirely — and is trying again this year.
• The number of government air monitors nationwide fell by nearly half over the same 20-year period, according to EPA data.

The decline was especially pronounced among air monitors that track toxic chemicals, including those linked to cancer and other serious health effects. 

For example, the network monitoring vinyl chloride — the carcinogen at the center of the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — shrank by more than half from 2004 to 2025. So did the network for chloroprene and benzene.

Floodlight analyzed the largest industrial sources of air pollution in Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, and West Virginia — where the monitoring legislation was introduced — and compared what each one reported releasing against what public monitors in those states are capable of detecting.

For 71 of the 100 facilities examined, the chemical they release most isn’t measured by any government monitor in the state. 

Hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, methanol — no air monitor currently reporting to the EPA measures those toxic chemicals. 

Nelson Roque, an assistant professor at Penn State, co-authored a 2025 study that found nearly six in 10 U.S. counties have no public air monitor at all.

Such gaps matter most in communities already facing higher risks. Black and low-income people bear a disproportionate share of elevated cancer risks from air toxics, according to the EPA. 

“We’ve realized the value of other infrastructure, and yet not this one,” Roque said. “Last I checked, we all breathe air.”

The shrinking public network has set the stage for another fight: who gets to measure the air, and whose data counts.

Louisiana: A monitoring gap, and the fight to keep it

Public air monitors in Louisiana — a national hub for oil, gas, and petrochemicals — are often located miles from major industrial polluters and fail to test for some of the most dangerous chemicals, a recent Floodlight investigation found. 

Community groups have tried to fill that gap. A $500,000 grant awarded under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act would have allowed the Louisiana Environmental Action Network to establish air monitoring in 27 communities it identified as pollution hot spots.

But the group was able to install monitors in only four communities before the Trump administration canceled the grant last year. 

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“It’s like having your legs knocked out from under you,” said LEAN executive director Marylee Orr.

In 2024, meanwhile, Louisiana became the first state to restrict the use of community air monitoring data. 

The Louisiana Chemistry Association helped draft the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act (CAMRA), which cites the need for “science-based standards” and bars the use of air pollution data in enforcement or regulatory actions unless it’s captured by EPA-approved monitors. That equipment typically costs tens of thousands of dollars.

In a previous statement to Floodlight, LCA president David Cresson defended the law, saying it ensures “data used to enforce our state’s environmental protection laws complies with minimum U.S. EPA standards” and doesn’t stop residents from monitoring air quality for their own information — only from using unregulated methods for enforcement purposes.

The same period brought other rollbacks, some sought by the chemical industry’s most powerful national lobbying group. The American Chemistry Council — the LCA’s national counterpart — spent more than $22 million lobbying in 2024, ranking 10th among 9,200 organizations tracked by an independent watchdog group. 

The ACC and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers last year requested a blanket two-year exemption from Biden-era regulations meant to cut certain toxic emissions by nearly 80 percent at roughly 200 chemical manufacturing plants. They didn’t get the blanket exemption — but individual plants that applied did.

So far, President Donald Trump’s EPA has granted more than 60 petrochemical facilities exemptions from the rule, and the agency is now weighing whether to rescind it entirely. 

The ACC also successfully lobbied against federal rules that would have required about two dozen chemical plants to conduct fenceline monitoring for ethylene oxide, a carcinogen that contributes substantially to the elevated cancer risk in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley.

The national trade group did not respond to Floodlight’s questions about its lobbying or its involvement in Louisiana’s CAMRA law. Nor did it explain its role in promoting similar legislation in other states. 

But in an emailed statement, the ACC said it has invested in community air-monitoring projects and “publicly advocated for expanded access to credible air quality information.” It said it supports monitoring that produces reliable, transparent data and gives communities and regulators information they can use to make informed decisions.

Kentucky takes a page from Louisiana 

Odors from Rubbertown, an industrial complex that housed tire and synthetic rubber plants during World War II, have long bothered residents in west Louisville, Kentucky. So, in the early 2000s, the city’s Air Pollution Control District, the EPA and others launched a study that confirmed what residents had long known: The air had unacceptably high levels of toxic pollutants. 

A plan was enacted, regulations were revised, and the air was continuously tested. More than 15 years later, regulators announced toxic air contaminants in the Louisville metro area were down by almost 80 percent — with the most dangerous chemicals cut by 96 percent.

Despite the success of expanded air monitoring in Louisville, Kentucky lawmakers have moved in the opposite direction. In March 2025, 10 months after Louisiana’s CAMRA law, they passed House Bill 137, which also restricted how air-monitoring data can be used in enforcement actions. 

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Lloyd “Rusty” Cress, executive director of the Kentucky Chemical Council, told the Kentucky Lantern that the bill was similar to Louisiana’s community air monitoring legislation.  The law says air needs to be tested with “scientifically defensible” methods — echoing a phrase used in an ACC blog post in 2023.

The ACC, the American Petroleum Institute, Dow Chemical and Chemours all lobbied for it.

Jess Loizeaux, a Chemours spokesperson, said the company doesn’t object to community air monitoring. “We object to community air monitoring results being used for enforcement decisions without first verifying the validity and accuracy of the data through official tests performed by trained technicians at the appropriate regulatory authority,” she told Floodlight.

Kentucky’s political push unfolded against a backdrop of major gaps in public air monitoring. Only one of the state’s 25 largest air polluters is close to an air monitoring station that measures the top toxic chemical it emits.

Fewer than a quarter of the state’s counties have an air monitoring station. 

Ohio’s restrictions meet with legal challenge 

Ohio’s new air monitoring rule was tucked into last year’s budget bill with no named sponsor.  It, too, stops regulators from acting on air-monitoring data collected by community groups. 

“When we take away the ability for those folks to have a reasonably priced monitor … for their own protection, we’ve just taken any tool they had right out of their hands,” said Miranda Leppla, an attorney who sued the state over the new rules last year on behalf of environmental groups.

The lawsuit also challenges another provision in the budget bill that instructs state regulators to remove Ohio’s “air nuisance rule,” which allowed citizens to take legal action against companies whose emissions endanger public health.

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One of the plaintiffs, Donna Ballinger, lives in Middletown, Ohio, hundreds of feet from a steel manufacturing plant that frequently rains down black, white, and gray particles onto her house and yard, she said. Fumes sometimes burn her eyes and throat, she said, and she often holds her nose when walking between her house and car. 

“My fear is cancer,” Ballinger told Floodlight.

She has an air monitor mounted in her front yard. But Ohio’s new requirement has made it impossible to use the data such monitors collect “as evidence of the nuisance conditions,” the lawsuit says.

The Ohio Chemistry Technology Council backed the measure. The group did not respond to Floodlight’s requests for an interview.

Tony Long, general counsel for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said businesses are concerned that uncalibrated air monitors will spread misinformation.

“Given our litigious nature in this state, we think that the guardrails make sense,” he told Floodlight. “You don’t want to be stopped for speeding on an uncalibrated speed gun.”

With more than 90 public air monitoring stations, Ohio has a more robust air monitoring network than some states. Yet none of Ohio’s 25 largest air polluters are within 20 miles of a public air monitoring station that measures its top toxic emission. In fact, no air monitor in the U.S. measures the chemical that 10 of them release most.

Ohio’s Syensqo Specialty Polymers plant, which makes a resin used in plastics, released more than 130 tons of volatile organic compounds into the air last year, according to Ohio regulators.

The nearest air monitoring station is about 4 miles away — in West Virginia — and doesn’t measure VOCs. 

Industry resistance stalls West Virginia efforts 

West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection runs just 14 monitoring sites in 12 counties. The other 43 counties have no state monitoring stations at all.

None of West Virginia’s 25 largest air polluters has a public air monitor within 25 miles that measures the pollutant it releases most. For 17 of the facilities, no air monitor anywhere in the U.S. measures their top toxic emission.

In 2024, a state bill backed by the West Virginia Manufacturers Association would have barred community air monitoring data from use in regulation, enforcement and lawsuits; it passed the House but died in the Senate — partly because industry couldn’t agree on what to include.

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A compromise version of the 2024 bill, drafted to address the concerns of some lawmakers, would have let regulators use community data if the monitors met manufacturer standards. Industry refused to support it. 

In emailed comments about the compromise bill, West Virginia Manufacturers Association Bill Bissett said it “neuters” the measure and was “now toothless.” Chemours’ Jeff Fritz wrote, “I do not like this draft,” and said the bill “essentially codifies what we are trying to prevent,” according to emails obtained by Mountain State Spotlight. Neither Bissett nor Fritz responded to requests for comment.

Subsequent bills, introduced in 2025 and 2026, also failed.

Why monitoring matters 

Evidence shows that better monitoring can reduce pollution — and potentially save lives. 

In 2018, the EPA made refineries begin monitoring benzene along their fencelines, and within five years, the number of refineries above EPA’s benzene action level dropped by half, according to a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

While some states have made it difficult to know what’s in the air, others have been proactive: 

• California is funding equipment and training for residents in fenceline communities to monitor for things like pesticides, hexavalent chromium, and other toxic chemicals. From 2017 to 2025, the state budgeted $1.4 billion to help communities that have historically been overburdened with air pollution.
• Colorado required four industrial plants to install fenceline monitors that measure hydrogen sulfide, benzene, and hydrogen cyanide in real time. The state also bought two mobile vans that regularly sample the same pollutants in surrounding neighborhoods. 
• The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and its contractors operate 33 automated gas chromatographs — sophisticated equipment that collects air samples every hour and provides near real-time readings of volatile organic compounds. 

But in much of the U.S, those who live near industrial plants still have little way to know what they’re breathing.

An unanswered question

Reonda Victor lives in Louisiana’s heavily industrialized corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where flares from industrial plants often illuminate the night sky. 

Her mother, grandmother, and sister all had breast cancer. Concerned about her own risk, she underwent genetic testing, which showed no predisposition to the disease, she said.

The closest public air monitoring station to her home — which lies in an area where air pollution poses one of the highest cancer risks in the country — tests only for lead. 

Did industrial pollution cause the illnesses that struck her family members? She can’t say. But proper air monitoring could help answer that question, she said.

“Without information, we don’t know.”

Kentucky Public Radio contributed to this investigation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s air monitors are disappearing. So is your power to expose polluters. on Sep 13, 2026.

A recent report from Healthy Eating Research (HER) recommends a new definition for ultra-processed foods (UPFs) to create effective food policy. They also highlight policy opportunities to limit their consumption. The panel hoped the report can aid federal agencies as they work toward an official UPF definition.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently submitted the first federal definition of UPFs for final review after considering input from “thousands of stakeholders, including industry, consumer organizations, researchers, and members of the public,” according to a press release from HHS. It did not provide the proposed definition.

The HER report considers UPFs as products with at least one cosmetic additive to increase palatability or ingredient of non-culinary use not found in a home kitchen, like high fructose corn syrup. 

The panel’s definition is based on the Nova food classification system, developed by researchers at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. While the Nova system provides a comprehensive framework for studying UPFs in a research setting, it is difficult to employ operationally for policymaking, explains Jim Krieger, the panel co-chair and Executive Director of Healthy Food America.

By creating a policy-oriented definition, government agencies can easily and consistently identify UPFs by referencing a comprehensive list of UPF ingredient markers. The report suggests that a federal agency should monitor the constantly changing food supply and update the list with additional ingredients regularly. Used alongside existing food evaluation measures, these approaches account for a product’s level of processing, nutrient content, and ingredients.

UPFs are typically processed foods with several ingredients, such as sodas, candy, flavored chips, and breakfast cereals, designed to be shelf-stable, sensorily appealing, marketable, and convenient. More than half of the calories that Americans consume come from UPFs– one of the highest levels of consumption in the world, according to the report.

“Americans face an unprecedented burden of diet-related disease, and the dominance of ultra-processed foods is a major contributor,” Dariush Mozaffarian, HER panel member and Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, tells Food Tank.

Studies including those published in The BMJ and the British Journal of Nutrition, link UPF consumption with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and mental health disorders. These findings have raised concerns among policymakers and government agencies, including the current administration, according to the report.

Using their definition, the panel recommends five policies that it believes are likely to be implemented by the federal government and effective in reducing UPF consumption in America. “The goal is not to eliminate all processed foods, but to shift the food system toward healthier formulations and defaults that make it easier, not harder, for people to eat well,” says Mozaffarian.

Their first recommendation is to tax select UPFs to increase their retail price and reduce their sales and consumption. Products would be chosen based on studies linking them to negative health outcomes, including sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats. 

The panelists do not recommend taxing all UPFs, as it would disproportionately affect low-income consumers. They suggest that UPF tax revenues be invested into programming that benefits those disproportionately affected by them, such as healthy eating programs.

“If we raise prices on these products without simultaneously improving access to affordable, minimally processed foods, we risk worsening food insecurity,” Emily Broad Leib, panel member and Director of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, tells Food Tank.

The report also calls on the government to restrict the procurement of UPFs in institutional settings, including schools, early childhood education centers, hospitals, and jails. 

Another policy recommendation aims to decrease demand for UPFs through funding counter marketing campaigns. Companies that produce UPFs heavily market their products, especially towards children. The panelists argue counter marketing campaigns can educate the public about the health risks of UPFs and point to the Truth Initiative anti-tobacco campaign as a model.

The report also proposes the inclusion of a limit on UPF intake within the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). While the 2025-2030 DGA suggests limiting highly processed foods, future guidelines should outline a specific upper limit.

UPF labels on the front of food packages can also be useful, the panel says. By indicating a product is ultra-processed, it may deter eaters from buying it. They acknowledge, however, that these might amplify health disparities among non-English speakers who have more trouble understanding the label. Dr. Krieger suggests that bilingual labeling may mitigate this issue.

The panel believes that the government’s attempt to regulate UPF consumption will positively impact public health. But they expect pushback from manufacturers. “Industry has a lot of influence on this administration… and they are totally geared up and lobbying hard against anything to regulate UPFs,” Dr. Krieger tells Food Tank.

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 Osarugue Igbinoba, Unsplash

The post Defining Ultra-Processed Foods: From Evidence to Action appeared first on Food Tank.

Headline News:

• “From Tiny Houses To Skis: Vattenfall Is Finding Creative Uses For Retired Wind Turbines” • In time, every wind turbine built will have to come down. Dealing with waste is important. Blades, nose cones, and nacelles are banned from landfills, but Vattenfall is finding purposes for them. For example, a nacelle might be made into a tiny house. [Euronews]

Tiny house made from nacelle (Vattenfall image)

• “El Niño Brings Record Slow Atlantic Hurricane Season” • No Atlantic hurricanes have formed yet this year and none are likely to form for at least another week, even though this is normally the peak of the season, according to the National Hurricane Center. This year set a record as the longest a season has gone without its first hurricane. [ABC News]
• “US District Court Finds JH Campbell Emergency Order Fake” • Consumers Energy, owner of the coal-burning JH Campbell plant, planned to replace it with methane and solar capacity and battery storage. This would reduce air pollution in the area along with the cost of electricity for customers. A fake emergency order stopped it. Until now. [CleanTechnica]
• “Biogas Faces A Market Reality Check As Wind And Solar Dominate Renewables” • An analysis reveals two structural challenges constraining biogas expansion: its high and stagnant costs, and feedstock limitations as a competitor for agricultural land. But over the past decade, the cost of wind and solar energy has dropped by 70% to 90%. [EIN News]
• “Anthropic CEO Says AI industry Needs To Slow Down For Safety” • Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said the artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without it, he warned, AI could be capable within six to twelve months of taking over the entire internet, for example. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

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Diferensiasi kini dapat muncul sebelum pengguna memahami mekanisme permainan. Satu provider mungkin memilih ilustrasi tiga dimensi dengan pencahayaan sinematik. Studio lain menggunakan karakter dua dimensi bergaya komik. Ada pula pendekatan minimalis dengan simbol besar, kontras tinggi, serta animasi singkat. Perbedaan tersebut membentuk bahasa desain.

Ketika konsisten diterapkan pada beberapa judul, pengguna mulai mengenali karakter produk tanpa perlu membaca nama providernya. Dalam konteks pasar, kemampuan tersebut bernilai karena katalog Slot Maxwin dapat memuat banyak game dengan tema serupa.

Provider Baru Tidak Harus Menang lewat Kompleksitas

Masuk ke pasar dengan animasi paling berat bukan jaminan memperoleh perhatian.

Provider baru justru mempunyai kesempatan melalui fokus lebih sempit. Misalnya, membangun transisi lebih cepat, karakter khas, navigasi sederhana, atau pendekatan visual khusus untuk layar vertikal.

Strategi seperti itu membuat persaingan provider lebih terbuka.

Studio besar mempunyai kekuatan dari katalog dan pengenalan merek. Pendatang baru dapat mengambil jalur berbeda melalui konsistensi estetika serta pengalaman antarmuka.

Tren Visual Slot Maxwin Mulai Mengikuti Mekanisme

Ada perubahan lain dengan dampak lebih besar: visual semakin sering dipakai untuk menjelaskan mekanisme.

Multiplier tidak cukup hanya muncul sebagai angka. Perubahan ukuran, posisi, atau animasinya membantu pengguna memahami kapan fitur aktif. Wild dapat memiliki gerakan khusus untuk menunjukkan fungsi berbeda. Area reel juga dapat berubah bentuk saat permainan memasuki fase bonus.

Artinya, desain mulai membawa informasi.

Pendekatan tersebut penting karena fitur permainan modern semakin berlapis. Tanpa hierarki visual, wild, scatter, multiplier, meter bonus, serta indikator lain dapat berebut perhatian pada layar sama.

Karakter Ikonik Kembali Menjadi Senjata Kompetisi

Tema dapat ditiru relatif mudah. Identitas karakter jauh lebih sulit.

Karena itu, karakter utama kembali memiliki posisi penting pada tren visual Slot Maxwin 2026. Wajah, kostum, siluet, ekspresi, sampai animasi dapat membantu sebuah game memperoleh identitas sendiri.

Provider baru dapat menggunakan karakter sebagai jangkar merek. Satu figur kuat bahkan bisa berkembang menjadi seri permainan berbeda tanpa kehilangan hubungan visual dengan judul sebelumnya.

Namun, karakter terkenal secara visual tidak otomatis menunjukkan kualitas mekanisme ataupun peluang kemenangan. Desain tetap perlu dipisahkan dari RTP, volatilitas, paytable, serta parameter matematis permainan.

Visual Ringan Mulai Menantang Efek Berlebihan

Persaingan grafis juga menghadirkan paradoks. Semakin banyak efek tidak selalu menghasilkan pengalaman lebih baik.

Animasi panjang dapat memperlambat navigasi. Partikel berlebihan mengganggu keterbacaan simbol. Efek kemenangan terlalu sering juga berpotensi membuat informasi utama tenggelam.

Karena itu, perubahan desain game Slot Maxwin 2026 berpeluang bergerak menuju efek lebih selektif. Animasi ditempatkan pada momen penting, sementara permainan dasar mempertahankan tampilan relatif bersih.

Ini bukan kemunduran visual. Sebaliknya, desain mulai bekerja lebih ekonomis.

Provider Baru Membuat Peta Visual Semakin Terbuka

Visual Slot Maxwin 2026 memperlihatkan pasar dengan batas estetika semakin cair. Tema klasik masih bertahan, tetapi pendekatan mobile-first, karakter ikonik, interface ringkas, animasi fungsional, serta identitas visual konsisten mulai mempunyai bobot lebih besar.

Bagi provider baru, perubahan tersebut membuka ruang kompetisi tanpa harus memiliki ratusan judul sejak awal. Beberapa game dengan bahasa desain kuat sudah cukup untuk membangun pembeda awal.

Persaingan provider akhirnya bergerak dari pertanyaan “siapa punya grafis paling ramai?” menuju persoalan lebih sulit: siapa mampu membuat game langsung dikenali, mudah dibaca, serta tetap memiliki karakter saat tampil di layar kecil.

Di situlah tren visual Slot Maxwin 2026 menjadi menarik. Desain tidak lagi berdiri di belakang mekanisme. Ia maju ke depan sebagai salah satu medan persaingan utama.

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

What does the global Greentech revolution mean for the American people? It could open new vistas of a Greentech New Deal. But as long as the US opposes rather than joining the Greentech revolution, it portends not only climate catastrophe, but economic catastrophe as well.

Collage (Art: alonesbe, Envato | Photo Credit of Trump: Gage Skidmore, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)

As we have seen throughout this series, the Greentech revolution is transforming energy production and use worldwide. Along with its other advantages, fossil free energy has become radically cheaper than fossil fuel energy. More than 90% of utility-scale renewable projects commissioned in 2025 delivered power below the cost of the cheapest new fossil-fuel plant built in their market. Natural gas energy is currently 3–4 times more expensive than solar and wind. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions like the Ukraine and Iran wars, which destabilize whole economies with shortages and higher prices for energy, food, and other necessities of life.

Donald Trump and the US government are doing everything possible to shut down fossil free energy and to expand our dependence on fossil fuels. That is already having a devastating effect on American workers and communities, and it is likely to get far worse in the future. We are being marooned on what two energy experts call a fossil fuel “energy island” as the rest of the world turns to an “electric world order.”

If Trump and his fossil fuelers succeed in defeating the Greentech revolution in the US, the result is likely to be a growing affordability crisis; devastation for the most fossil-fuel dependent industries like autos, coal, iron, and gas; a general decline of the fossil-fuel intensive US economy; disinvestment; a loss of international competitiveness; and macroeconomic effects like inflation and recession or both.

These trends can sometimes be seen in the day-to-day operation of markets, like the decline of the US and European auto industries or the worldwide shift to renewables after the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. But paradoxically, they can also be concealed by short-term fluctuations. For example, the sharp rise in the cost of oil after the closing of the Strait of Hormuz produced a boom in oil company profits. Similarly, the rising demand for electricity for data centers created a boom for natural gas generators. Such developments might appear to refute the argument that the fossil fuel-based US economy is increasingly uncompetitive and in danger of becoming a stranded asset. However, amid all the price gyrations, nothing seems to refute the fundamental underlying fact: Fossil fuel energy is and will remain more expensive and less secure than fossil free energy. I have seen nothing that indicates otherwise.

The long-term decline of the fossil fuel-based economy is manifested in many ways. In this commentary I will examine two impacts on Americans of our country’s failure to join the Greentech revolution:

• It makes prices higher for Americans
• It makes US-produced goods and services more costly and therefore less competitive at home and abroad

Crashing autos

Electric Car at Charging Station | Photo credit: sofiiashunkina, Envato

The headline example of eschewing the Greentech revolution is the US auto industry. For decades, the industry – supported by US government policies — failed to invest in EVs and concentrated instead on its highly profitable gas-guzzling cars and trucks. Briefly under the Biden administration the federal government invested in EV charging infrastructure and a $7,500 consumer tax credit. Electric vehicle sales grew 60%.

Then Trump abandoned pro-EV policies and subsidized fossil fueled vehicles with a panoply of strategies. EV sales plummeted. The industry began shutting down its EVs factories. In 2025 Stellantis wrote down $26 billion in EV-related losses; Ford reported a $19 billion loss. The auto journalist Martin Padgett told the New York Times, “We pulled a U-turn while the rest of the world was pushing forward.”

Fossil fuel dependence is costly for American car owners. Here’s what gas dependence means in dollars and cents for auto drivers: In January 2026, before the disruptions caused by the Iran war, the cost to drive 100 miles in an electric car was $5.77; in a gas car it was $11.23. By summer — after the closing of the Straight of Hormuz — to drive 100 miles in the electric car cost almost the same as before, $5.89, but in the gas car it cost $16.69 –three times as much as the EV.

Its failure to develop EVs and its addiction to gas guzzlers has made the US auto industry non-competitive domestically.  In 1965, US companies produced more than 90% of new cars purchased in the US; today, barely a third are built by the Big Three.

The failure of the US auto industry to adopt Greentech is at least equally significant internationally. A quarter of all vehicles sold globally in 2025 were battery powered. (That figure is projected to reach 29% in 2026 due to high gas prices caused by the Iran war.) Bloomberg analysts predict that by next decade fewer than half of cars sold globally will be gas-powered. China, which provides 30% of the global car market, has seen sales of internal combustion vehicles plummet by nearly two-thirds since 2017. China now makes 75 percent of all EVs sold worldwide; the United States makes around 5 percent. Susan Helper, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who was chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Barack Obama, told the New York Times that in the worst-case scenario the US auto industry will become a “shrinking island of ICE (internal combustion engines),” churning out outlandishly large trucks and not much else. At which point, the Times noted, the obsolescence of the mighty U.S. automobile industry” would be “all but guaranteed.”

About three million Americans work for automobile and parts manufacturers and dealers. About 24 million jobs depend on spending by car manufacturers, their employees, or car owners.

Vehicle and parts makers shed about 21,000 U.S. jobs in the last year, despite Trump administration tariffs designed to force them to manufacture domestically.

The fossil fuel island

Wind farm Shanxi, China, November 4, 2015. Photo credit: Hahaheditor12667, Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The global shift from gas guzzlers to EVs is part of a more general long-term shift from fossil fuels to fossil free energy which is rendering the US a fossil fuel island. Two energy experts summarized the current phase of this process:

“Global clean energy investment reached a record $2.2 trillion in 2025, twice the flow into fossil fuels. In 2024, 91 percent of newly commissioned utility-scale renewable projects produced electricity more cheaply than the cheapest new fossil fuel alternative, and battery storage costs have fallen 93 percent since 2010, allowing utilities to use batteries to store solar and wind power even when the weather is uncooperative. In 2025, fossil fuel electricity generation fell in both China and India.

“Before the Iran war, this green transition was also spreading beyond wealthy markets. In 2024, Chinese solar exports to developing economies surpassed shipments to advanced economies. Pakistan imported approximately 17 gigawatts of Chinese solar modules that year, equivalent to almost half of its grid-connected capacity. In Indonesia, Thailand, and Mexico, the cheapest Chinese-made EVs have reached price parity with the cheapest internal combustion options.”

In July, China announced binding targets to increase wind and solar power generation by more than 50% over the next five years.

How the Greentech transition will develop in the future is of course a matter for speculation, but BloombergNEF’s (BNEF) New Energy Outlook2026 provides one plausible projection:

• Solar will become the world’s single largest source of electricity in the next six years, due to a major supply glut, technology advances, and falling prices.
• If countries continue on their current path of rapidly deploying economically competitive clean technologies, they stand to cut their reliance on imported fossil fuels and ultimately strengthen their energy security.
• Many countries that depend on fossil fuels are now able to reduce their economic exposure to energy commodity imports by adopting low-carbon technologies.

Energy investor Rob Carlson recently drew the implications for the US economy: Continuing to burn fossil fuels is a “self-imposed financial penalty” which will “ultimately degrade the country’s long-term global competitiveness.” The same applies to any nation or polity that “chooses to continue burning fossil fuels in any application in which electricity could instead be provided more competitively with renewables.”

The replacement of fossil fuel energy by Greentech has been greatly accelerated by the war in the Persian Gulf region. According to a June 30 report by NPR, “The Iran war and high oil and gas prices have supercharged the adoption of renewables and EVs worldwide. Global investors say these technologies make financial sense and increase energy security.” As fossil fuel prices soared, countries are “turning to these technologies that are basically impervious to whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz. Solar batteries and EVs have gotten a lot cheaper.” Chinese battery exports rose 69% in March compared to 2025; their solar exports in March are up 84% compared to 2025.

The NPR report concluded,

“It doesn’t look good for oil long term. With all these new EVs, that means a lot less people filling up their cars with gas around the world. Before the war in Iran, the International Energy Agency was expecting global oil demand to rise this year. But the disruptions caused by the Strait of Hormuz led them to downgrade expectations to a decline in oil demand this year. In some ways, the U.S. is becoming an outlier in the global energy transition.”

In the face of the Iran war energy shortages some countries have been turning to coal. But analysis by the thinktank Ember found that even a worst-case return to coal would raise global coal-fired generation by no more than 1.8 percent in 2026 relative to a no-crisis baseline; indeed, global coal generation could still fall this year.

Currently there is little reason to expect the Straight of Hormuz to be reopened any time soon, or for fossil fuel prices to return to their levels before the Iran war. And there are plenty of reasons to expect further disruptions with further fossil fuel gyrations in the future.

The US trend towards ever greater fossil fuel dependence and the consequent rise of its energy prices is being further aggravated by the expansion of gas, oil, and even coal to provide energy for hyperscale data centers. That is likely to further increase the isolation of the US as a high-cost fossil fuel island.

If the US becomes ever more a fossil fuel island in a Greentech world, the consequences are likely to be dire. Bill Hare, chief executive of the thinktank Climate Analytics, said, “Any investment in new fossil fuels now is a fool’s gamble, while joining the race to renewables can only bring benefits – not just jobs and cheaper energy at stable prices, but energy independence and access where it’s needed most.”

Is the US doomed to be a fossil fuel island? Our next series of commentaries will lay out an alternative: The Green New Deal 2.0.

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The post America’s Future: Fossil Fuel Island in a Greentech World? first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Tempest and Counterpunch recommend Ian Angus's new book

Source

Date & Time:  Tuesday, September 22, 2026 | 07:00 PM EDT 

Click to Register

Description

The future of the Republic and more will be at stake when voters go to the polls in November.

Can Trump, who this month celebrated the neo-Nazi AFD’s victory in East Germany, and his allies sufficiently rig the elections to reinforce their power & privilege, further undermine constitutional democracy, and continue their unprecedented economic corruptions?

Will Democrats, divided as they are, win control of one or both houses of Congress, hold those who have ruled illegally and brutally accountable?

Come election day, what can we and our movements do to defend and restore the rule of law, economic security, racial justice, and peace?

Our webinar is designed to help frame priorities, including actions as well as policy commitments, that state and community-based movement leaders should be thinking about as we approach November’s elections.

The post WEBINAR: Building and Defending Democracy in November’s Elections first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Homeowners in Hispanic and Black communities nationwide are paying a disproportionate share of skyrocketing home insurance costs, according to a recent report. The disparities leave communities of color at greater risk as climate change increases the frequency of billion-dollar disasters.  

The report, released in July by the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit representing nearly 250 consumer groups, concluded that homeowners in predominantly Hispanic ZIP codes pay on average a 30 percent higher premium ($950 more annually) compared with homeowners in white communities. In predominantly Black ZIP codes, homeowners pay, on average, a 16 percent higher premium ($500 more annually).

The findings were based on an analysis of identical policies across communities, eliminating the possibility the inequities were related to differences among homeowners, their homes or what they chose to insure, the report said. Local risk factors could be responsible for some of the disparities, although even when such factors were accounted for the gap remained large.

“We’ve talked a lot about our insurance affordability crisis,” said Sharon Cornelissen, director of housing at the Consumer Federation of America and a co-author of the report. “What we haven’t really talked about is sort of the racially inequitable impacts of that, and that Black and Hispanic homeowners are particularly struggling.”

The inequities add up to at least $28,500 in additional insurance costs over the span of a 30-year mortgage for homeowners in Hispanic communities and $15,000 for homeowners in Black communities, according to the report. The situation points to a legacy of redlining in home insurance that continues to challenge communities of color when it comes to homeownership and exposure to risk, although the discrimination today may be inadvertent.

Read Next What’s driving up your expenses? Many Americans say climate change. Kate Yoder

The historical practice of redlining involved the designation of certain neighborhoods as “hazardous” for mortgage lending, based largely on the race of residents. People in these neighborhoods were denied home loans, leading to lower home values and less homeownership. Although redlining ended in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act, the practice has left a legacy of segregation and disparities in these neighborhoods that endures today when it comes to health care, education, incarceration, access to nutritious food and public investment in infrastructure. The inequities also have left these communities more vulnerable to climate impacts such as heat. 

Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, said premiums are based on risk and not race or ethnicity and that the system used to establish premiums is actuarially grounded and heavily regulated.

“Using race, or any proxy for race, to set insurance rates is illegal in every U.S. jurisdiction, and state insurance regulators review and approve the rating factors insurers use precisely to guard against that,” he said in a statement provided to Inside Climate News. “Many of the communities cited in reports like this are located in areas with objectively higher catastrophe exposure or higher costs to rebuild and repair after a loss.”

The report found the most acute home insurance disparity among homeowners in predominantly Hispanic ZIP codes in Florida, where they pay on average 58 percent more ($5,014 annually) for the same coverage as those in white communities. In the next four states, the gap was pronounced, but smaller: 20 percent ($431) in New York, 18 percent ($278) in Washington, 16 percent ($244) in Massachusetts and 15 percent ($633) in Kansas.

The inequities in Florida, where homeowners have been particularly hard-hit by insurance costs, represent “an enormous amount of money,” said Moira Birss, senior fellow at the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank. “And so when we’re thinking about how we’re having an affordability crisis in this country … that’s unconscionable.”

Read Next Is your state becoming uninsurable? We have the latest data. Jake Bittle, Emily Jones, Vivian La, Anila Yoganathan, Katie Myers, Clayton Aldern, & Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco

When it comes to predominantly Black ZIP codes, the inequities are greatest in Michigan at 74 percent ($1,768 annually), followed by Pennsylvania at 57 percent ($1,048), New Jersey at 22 percent ($332), Massachusetts at 20 percent ($321) and New York at 19 percent ($417).

Meanwhile, the cost of insurance for the typical homeowner jumped by 24 percent between 2021 and 2024, according to the report, based on previous research by the Consumer Federation of America. Greenhouse gas emissions, primarily those associated with fossil fuels, are heating the global climate, shifting weather patterns and leading to more extreme disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires. That risk is moving insurance companies to raise rates.

Insurance companies have provided fewer and more expensive options in communities of color compared with white communities, the report said. It highlighted a $17.5 million settlement from the 1990s over a lawsuit alleging the insurance company Nationwide discouraged agents from selling coverage in Black neighborhoods, labeled Black ZIP codes as undesirable and used racial profiling to deny insurance to Black homeowners. American Family Mutual Insurance Company similarly agreed to pay more than $16 million in a settlement to Black homeowners who were provided inferior policies and, in some cases, denied coverage based on race.

More recently insurers have adopted new proprietary methods for determining premiums and claims payments, including some incorporating artificial intelligence, that raise concerns about possible discrimination, according to the report. For instance, previous research by the Consumer Federation of America found that homeowners with lower credit scores pay an average penalty of $1,996 annually, or 99 percent more, for insurance, a concern considering longstanding structural factors that have meant communities of color tend to have lower credit scores.

“I’m not saying that they have some secret race factor that they put into their model,” Cornelissen said. “A lot of this bias can kind of creep in if they’re not paying attention to potential unequal impacts. A lot of this could be through AI models or other factors that have a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic communities.”

Friedlander said the best way to make insurance more affordable and equitable is by reducing risk through resilience efforts such as strengthening building codes and increasing mitigation funding. 

The report called on states to enforce fair housing laws and demand more transparency and accountability.

“Unless the insurance industry wants to give us more information about why this is happening,” Birss said, “it’s pretty hard not to interpret this as pretty serious racial discrimination.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As extreme weather worsens, Black and Hispanic homeowners are paying more for insurance on Sep 12, 2026.

Headline News:

• “Five Positive Tipping Points To Save The World” • Landmark research from The Earthshot Prize and the University of Exeter revealed 51 solutions that can trigger “rapid and transformative change” to repair the planet over the next five years. Out of these 51 solutions, five priority clusters have been identified. They are called ‘Earthshots.’ [Euronews]

Wind turbine in a rainforest (César Badilla Miranda, Unsplash)

• “Rhode Island Energy Looks To Maine Onshore Wind Farm For Electricity” • After a series of failed attempts to get offshore wind power, the Rhode Island utility operator turned landward. Rhode Island Energy announced that it has tentatively agreed to buy 150 MW of electricity from an onshore wind farm planned for northern Maine. [Rhode Island Current]
• “‘Incredible Progress’: Inside The €682 Billion Drive To Turn The Mediterranean Into A Renewable Powerhouse” • An analysis estimates that the Mediterranean region has utility-scale solar and wind projects at 552 GW that have either been announced or are already under development. The analysis used data from the Global Integrated Power Tracker. [Euronews]
• “India Is Rebuilding The Case For Global Climate Finance” • Disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz show India’s dependencies on oil and gas. Higher prices constrain the whole economy. The structural lesson is clear: Energy import dependence leaves India exposed not only to physical supply disruption but to long-term economic and security costs. [CleanTechnica]
• “Federal Court Rejects Trump Order Keeping Michigan Coal Plant Open” • A federal court ruled that the Energy Department exceeded its authority when it ordered a Michigan coal-fired plant to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year. Energy Secretary Chris Wright had claimed to have emergency power to keep it operating. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

On Tuesday morning, Sept. 22, Food Tank and the American Farmland Trust will host “Thriving Farms and Ranches” at Climate Week NYC 2026. The summit will celebrate farmers, policymakers, and innovators who are working to build a stronger future for farms and ranches.

“Farmers and ranchers are leading the way toward a more resilient future,” says Joy O’Shaughnessy, Vice President of Communications at American Farmland Trust. “This summit will showcase the solutions, partnerships, and opportunities helping farms and ranches thrive. We hope attendees leave inspired by the people and solutions shaping the future of agriculture.”

From strengthening agricultural resilience and supporting producers to protecting working lands and expanding economic opportunity, discussions will explore solutions that empower farmers and ranchers while building a more sustainable and secure food system for future generations.

Topics include the International Year of the Woman Farmer, farmland access for a new generation, state policies accelerating conservation practices, how farm-to-school programs support farmers, regenerative grazing and reshaping the beef supply chain, and teaching the next generation of eaters.

The event will kick off at WNYC-NPR Studios’ The Greene Space in New York City at 9am with breakfast and live musical performances, followed by a reception until 12:30pm.

Confirmed speakers include Hillary Barile, Owner, Rabbit Hill Farms; Amanda Beal, Commissioner, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry; John Chester, FarmLore Films; Oliver English, Co-Founder and CEO, Common Table Creative; Simon English, Co-Founder and Creative Director, Common Table Creative; Heidi Exline, New York & New Jersey Deputy Director, American Farmland Trust; Tim Fink, Vice President of Policy, American Farmland Trust; Olivia Fuller, Fourth-Generation Farmer, Fuller Acres; Dominick Grant, Partner and Managing Director, Dirt Capital Partners; Will Harris, Owner, White Oak Pastures; Brooks Lamb, Director of Food Systems and Agriculture Policy, Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator; Caitlin Leibert, Global Head of Sustainability, Amazon Worldwide Grocery; Bianca Moebius-Clune, PhD, Climate and Soil Health Director, American Farmland Trust; Jenny Lester Moffitt, Vice President of Farmland Protection and Strategic Priorities, American Farmland Trust; Danielle Nierenberg, President, Food Tank; Heather Oppel, Senior Climate Manager, General Mills; John Piotti, President and CEO, American Farmland Trust; Karen Ross, Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture; Deydra Steans, Manager, S3 Legacy Ranch; Kat Taylor, President, TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation; and Jeff Tkach, CEO, Rodale Institute.

“Nourishing the Future” will feature a special musical performance by Madison Claire Parks, a Broadway actor and singer who recently completed nearly two years as the Glinda understudy on the Wicked National Tour. She will be joined by Broadway Music Director Noah Turner.

This summit will be streamed live on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s YouTube channel, here. Join the Food Tank newsletter list for reminders, and click here for Food Tank’s full lineup of events at Climate Week NYC 2026.

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.

The post At Climate Week NYC, Farmers Look Toward a Stronger Future appeared first on Food Tank.

September 2026— Waste management must no longer be viewed only as a public health issue but must become a priority for climate action. That was one of the key messages of the “International Zero Waste Seminar: The Strategic Role of Organic Waste in Climate Action and the Democratization of Solutions,” organized by GAIA, Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), and the Zero Waste Chile Alliance.

The event brought together 50 representatives from more than 26 municipalities in Chile, 45 organizations from over 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, government officials, grassroots waste pickers, and academics, who shared experiences on public policy, composting, recycling, repair, and local waste management.

Methane was at the center of the discussion. Marcelo Mena, executive director of the Global Methane Hub, emphasized that “if we reduce methane emissions, the drop in temperature would be practically immediate,” and argued that reducing organic waste is one of the most effective and cost-efficient measures to move in this direction.

Juan Pablo Escudero, a researcher at UCLA’s Emmett Institute, highlighted the contribution of new technologies in identifying sources of methane. “The big climate action isn’t just about stopping the burning of oil. We have to look at waste,” he stated.

Organic Waste: From Problem to Resource

The seminar focused particularly on the potential of organic waste to produce compost, regenerate soil, and reduce emissions.

Mariela Pino, a methane mitigation campaigner for GAIA Lac, noted that “waste management is no longer just a public health issue” and that its connection to climate change requires a different approach. Pino argued that moving toward zero waste requires maximizing the recycling of organic and inorganic materials, implementing separate collection systems and source separation, and ensuring adequate funding.

She also highlighted the importance of linking waste management to soil protection and food production: “We have to view waste not only as a public health issue, but as part of a socio-environmental economy that generates significant benefits,” she said.

The case studies presented showed that these solutions are already being implemented. In the Quinta Normal municipality of Chile, for example, a pilot program for organic recycling at open-air markets is underway, while in Melipeuco, the municipality has been working since 2021 on a local zero-waste strategy in collaboration with local communities.

Meanwhile, Fértil Compostaje, a family-run farming business in Chile’s La Araucanía region, processes between 20 and 30 metric tons of agricultural waste to produce compost. Its director, Germán Jara, warned about the deterioration of agricultural soils and stated: “We’re not burying waste; we’re burying the solution to regenerate our soils.”

A transition that must include waste pickers

The role of grassroots waste pickers was another key focus of the meeting. Soledad Mella, from the National Association of Waste Pickers of Chile, called for the transition to zero-waste systems to incorporate those who have historically sustained material recovery. “A just transition isn’t about moving waste from one place to another—it’s about shifting power, investment, and opportunities toward those who sustain recycling,” she said.

From Brazil, Roselaine Mendes, international secretary of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Waste Pickers (RedLacre), highlighted the importance of providing economic recognition for the work of waste pickers. “Simply making a living from the sale of materials isn’t sustainable. We need to be paid for our work,” she noted.

The seminar also addressed the progress and challenges of Chilean public policies, including the Extended Producer Responsibility Law, infrastructure for organic waste management, public education, and coordination among national, regional, and municipal governments.

For Magdalena Donoso, regional coordinator for GAIA and BFFP in Latin America and the Caribbean, the progress achieved is the result of the organization and perseverance of various stakeholders. “Agendas shift when those with unyielding determination decide to organize and take action before success seems possible, and they persevere because they refuse to accept that what makes no sense should continue to be perpetuated,” she stated.

The meeting concluded with a call to strengthen collaboration among governments, municipalities, social organizations, waste pickers, communities, academia, and the private sector to accelerate local solutions that reduce emissions, prevent waste, and move toward zero-waste systems.

Adam Currie is Campaign and Movement Support Manager at 350 Aotearoa. In this piece, prompted by a photograph of the glacier collapse on the Tibet/Nepal border, Adam reflects on grief, scale, and the difference between despair and honest reckoning — and issues a gentle challenge: one climate commitment, made and kept, this September.

Credit: Chinese mountaineer Zhia Yitie

Take a look at this photo. It isn’t remarkable until you look closer. It shows the aftermath of the tragic glacier collapse on the Tibet/Nepal border. The pale stream running down the center is where the ice came away.

What made me double-take wasn’t what had fallen, but what remains.

Look closely at the glacier. Almost all of it is still there. Then think of the tens of thousands of other glaciers across the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. Picture yourself running away from a surging torrent caused by a collapsed glacier – as thousands in Nepal actually did. Imagine a circle widening across the globe from this one place: rivers, coastlines, towns, ecosystems and lives, all shaped by how much more warming we allow. And it’s so easy in our detached lives to not think about any of this – although perhaps less so for the increasing numbers of us struck by climate-fuelled disasters across the world.

It’s difficult to comprehend the scale of the damage still ahead of us, and there is plenty to grieve; not least the 1300+ folks killed by the flash floods. Our hearts and prayers go out to everyone affected — those who lost loved ones, homes, and communities in this disaster.

But let’s resist the urge to give up before we’ve truly lost. Because the same image also tells us something hopeful: there is still so much damage we can prevent.

The climate crisis isn’t a cliff we either fall off or don’t. There’s no single line that, once crossed, seals our fate — and no single line that, if held, saves us. It’s more like a boulder rolling down a long slope: it’s already moving, and we can’t stop it outright, but we can still shape how fast it goes and how much damage it does on the way down.

A recent UN report confirmed that the world is now set to breach the 1.5°C warming threshold within the next few years. That’s real, and it’s serious. But the same report makes a crucial point: breaching 1.5°C is not the same as losing. How far the boulder rolls, and how much it flattens on the way, is still being decided — by the emissions we cut or don’t cut, starting now.

That’s why every fraction of a degree matters: each one changes what happens on the way down, a slightly worse drought, a stronger storm, another flooded town. And that’s why every tonne of carbon we keep out of the atmosphere matters too — not because any one tonne will stop the boulder, but because collectively, our tonnes decide how hard it lands.

I am writing from New Zealand, where there is a whakataukī – or saying – “Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua” or “I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past,” has always resonated with me, and never been more relevant toda

I remember the solidarity after the climate-fuelled destruction of Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. People flooded into the area with shovels, food, generators, boats and above all, kindness. Roads were cut off and homes were destroyed, but communities still found ways to reach one another. Hope in moments like that one was never about pretending the damage is small; but is refusing to let the damage be the only thing that defines what happens next.

As I wrote in 2020, there’s no point in a ‘climate sprint’ into the future without learning from and honouring the climate-fuelled disasters that have already happened, or forgetting the mātauranga and ways of living that communities have carried for generations. Sure, a few technological ‘advancements’ may or may not give us a bump. But the key solutions are in the past – living within our means, leaning into hard work/discomfort, sharing, living in the right relationship with others and the land.

None of us controls the whole picture. But everyone reading this has some small piece of it within reach.

So, as September and spring begin, I encourage us all to make one new climate commitment for this month. Just one thing you will actually do differently. The commitment could be anything. Write to someone dealing with a climate disaster here or overseas. Turn up to a planting day. Donate to 350.org. Ground yourself in your community. Volunteer for a climate org. Reach out to someone you’ve lost touch with and pull them a little closer into your community.

The glacier in this photograph is partly gone, but most of it is still there. It’s the same with our humanity. This government and the philosophy behind it are doing their best to undermine the bonds that tie us to each other, and make us retreat into our shells. We’ve lost a lot. But most of us are still here. Monty Python might say, “Always look on the bright side of life.” To that I would add: if we truly believe in the bright side, we have to walk towards it.

 

Credit to Chinese mountaineer Zhia Yitie for the photo, and 350.org pioneer Bill McKibben for bringing our attention to it.

 

The post Finding Steady Ground on a Glacier still Standing: A Letter from Aotearoa appeared first on 350.

California Nurses Association called on SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West President Dave Regan to resign following media allegations of inappropriate, aggressive behavior and threats targeting other labor staff to support the Prop. 40 billionaire tax initiative.

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

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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.
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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

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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