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The Toxic Legacy of Eighty Years of U.S. Military Occupation

Part 2 of a 3-part series.  Part 1 examined PFAS at Pituffik Space Base; while Part 3 will survey the appeals U.S. veterans have filed with the U.S. Veterans Administration, claiming cancers and disease as a result of their exposure to toxins in Greenland.

By Pat Elder
July 9, 2026

“Greenland doesn’t really help Denmark. Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s important for the United States... It should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark.” — U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking in Ankara, Türkiye, July 7, 2026, Photo CNBC

Introduction

President Donald Trump's July 2026 remarks criticizing Denmark's relationship with Greenland provide an unexpected backdrop for this report. Although the President did not specify what he meant by Denmark "not spending money to really help Greenland," his comments invite a broader examination of the responsibilities that accompany the American military presence and strategic interest on the world's largest island.

The geopolitical tensions have been extraordinary. Following President Trump's repeated suggestions earlier this year that he might use military force to acquire Greenland, Danish military planners reportedly developed highly classified contingency plans that included destroying key Greenlandic airfields if the United States attempted an invasion, according to the BBC.

On April 1, 2026, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was negotiating with Denmark for access to three additional military installations in Greenland. According to the newspaper, two of the proposed sites were former American bases abandoned following the Cold War. The report underscored Greenland's renewed strategic importance at a moment when many of the environmental consequences of earlier U.S. military operations remain unresolved.

For more than eighty years, the United States has maintained an extensive network of military installations across Greenland. Those bases left behind nuclear radiation, fuel spills, abandoned infrastructure, military waste, contaminated landfills, PCB-containing materials, asbestos, unexploded ordnance, and, at several locations, documented PFAS contamination associated with firefighting activities.

Successive Danish and Greenlandic governments have invested substantial public resources investigating former American installations, documenting contamination, and, in some rare cases, undertaking cleanup projects. The United States has strongly maintained that it bears no legal obligation to restore former facilities to their original condition, relying on provisions contained in Article XI of the 1951 Defense Agreement: “It is understood that any areas or facilities made available to the  Government of the United States of America under this Agreement need not be left in the condition in which they were at the time they were thus made available.”

As a result, almost all of the financial burden for assessing and addressing contamination has fallen on Denmark and Greenland rather than on the guilty party that established and operated the installations.

When the U.S. upgraded its radar systems in 2004, Greenland attempted to compel  the United States to clean up former U.S. bases on the island.  U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that the legal responsibility for cleaning up older, abandoned bases had already transferred to local/Danish authorities and would remain there.  Because the U.S. maintained this legal stance, the Danish government ultimately agreed to pay for the cleanup.

In 2018 the Danish government relented by investing around 24 million Euro to “clean-up” the abandoned bases. It is a paltry sum. By 2024, progress on the clean-up had been slow. Only around 5.3 million Euro has been spent. That figure is almost irrelevant when measured against the scale of cleaning up the horror at Camp Century alone.

No public authority has produced a comprehensive cleanup estimate for Camp Century. Given the scale of the buried infrastructure, the Arctic environment, and the costs associated with excavating, transporting, and disposing of radioactive and hazardous materials, the eventual cost could reasonably reach into the billions of euros.

This report provides a consolidated overview of former United States military installations in Greenland and their documented environmental legacy. It is based primarily on the groundbreaking investigative reporting and field research published by the Danish newspaper Politiken supplemented by publicly available reports from the Government of Greenland, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), NIRAS, U.S. government agencies, scientific literature, and historical records.

Military Poisons is indebted to the journalists, editors, photographers, and researchers at Politiken for their exceptional work documenting the environmental legacy of former U.S. military activities in Greenland. Their reporting has significantly advanced public understanding of these historically important sites and provided an invaluable foundation for further research.

The individual descriptions of each installation have been substantially condensed from the original source material to provide readers with a concise reference to the history, environmental conditions, and current status of each site. While every effort has been made to accurately reflect the available public record, this report is intended as a summary and research aid rather than a substitute for the original investigations and technical reports.

Taken together, these installations reveal a remarkably consistent pattern spanning more than eight decades of American military operations in Greenland. Facilities ranging from major air bases to isolated weather stations and LORAN navigation sites were frequently abandoned with fuel drums, vehicles, construction materials, electrical equipment, batteries, hazardous building materials, and waste disposal areas left in place. Environmental investigations have repeatedly documented petroleum contamination, Polychlorinated biphenyls PCBs, asbestos, mercury, lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals, while many sites remain only partially characterized because comprehensive environmental assessments have never been completed.  Camp Century occupies a category of its own. Unlike the conventional military installations scattered across Greenland, the underground nuclear-powered base left behind highly toxic radioactive waste, diesel fuel, sewage, and thousands of tons of construction materials beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet.

One of the more striking findings is how unevenly these sites have been investigated. A few former bases have undergone detailed engineering studies involving soil, water, sediment, and waste characterization. Others have received only scant historical inventories documenting visible structures and debris. Several installations—including Camp Tuto, Camp Fistclench, the Ice Cap Sites, and a number of protected-area weather stations—have never undergone comprehensive environmental assessments.

Cleanup efforts have likewise been inconsistent. Denmark initiated a political agreement in 2018 to begin addressing contamination at selected former American installations, but remediation has progressed slowly. Several major sites remain only partially cleaned despite years of planning. Other installations, including Pituffik Space Base and several research camps within the active military reservation, are excluded from testing and remediation because they remain operational. Somehow, sharing environmental secrets involving levels of PCB’s, PFAS, Radiation, and Mercury are matters of national security. The same holds true from Weisbaden, Germany to Yokosuka, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii. Victims in these locations cry out for data and justice.

As Greenland assumes greater strategic importance and climate change accelerates the exposure of long-buried Cold War infrastructure, the environmental legacy of former U.S. military installations is likely to receive increasing international attention. This report seeks to provide a concise, evidence-based reference to what is presently known about these sites, where significant uncertainties remain, and where additional investigation is long overdue.

What’s in a drum?

Throughout Greenland, former American military installations are littered with hundreds of thousands of abandoned steel fuel drums. Many reportedly contained residual gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, lubricating oil, or other petroleum products when they were discarded. As these drums corrode over time, residual fuels and additives leach into surrounding soils and surface waters. Among the contaminants of greatest concern are petroleum hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, particularly the BTEX chemicals—benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes—along with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other fuel constituents, like PCB’s. See our rundown on the 36 contaminated sites below. First, please consider helping us financially.

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Before reading on, Please support our testing in Fort Ord, California.

The distance from Fort Ord, California, to Nuuk, Greenland is only about 3,300 miles. Most people are surprised to learn that.

This fall, I will travel to Fort Ord to meet with a dozen local environmental advocates, scientists, and Army veterans who are deeply concerned about the rapid redevelopment of the former Army base. New apartments, homes, schools, parks, and retail centers continue to be built over land that contains some of the military's deadliest legacy contamination.

‍Over the years, almost 2,000 local residents, former service members, and civilian workers have told us about cancers and other illnesses they believe are connected to their exposure at Fort Ord.

‍We are especially concerned about large groundwater plumes containing trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), and carbon tetrachloride (CT). These chemicals can migrate into buildings as vapor, potentially affecting the air people breathe inside their homes and workplaces. We are also concerned about the possible presence and movement of PFAS ("forever chemicals") and other toxic contaminants in groundwater, soil, surface water, and indoor dust.

‍Our goal is to collect independent environmental samples, work with qualified experts, and make the results available to the public. We believe communities deserve reliable information about the environment where they live, work, and raise their families. We need your help. We need to pay for airfare for three of us (from Maryland, Ohio, and Michigan). We must pay for lodging for four nights. (two stars..) And then, we have to pay for the testing. We already have the Cyclopure test kits for PFAS. We still need to pay for testing of soil, air, and water at different locations. $10,000 is our goal.
See who “we” are.

If you have supported Military Poisons in the past, we hope you will consider helping us again. If you didn’t receive a personal thank you, I apologize. Every donation helps us bring greater transparency to this community living with the environmental legacy of military contamination.

‍ Thank you for standing with us.   Go here, to the bottom of the page to contribute. https://www.fortordcontamination.org/ Now, back to Greenland.

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Part I — The Bluie West Installations

Bluie West 1 (Narsarsuaq) U.S. Operation:1942–1958

The largest American air base in Greenland during World War II, Bluie West 1 served as a major refueling stop for thousands of aircraft enroute to Europe. When the United States departed in 1958, it left behind extensive debris, including aircraft wreckage, oil drums, batteries, cables, machinery, buried scrap metal, and asbestos from the former military hospital. Local officials report that waste was buried in multiple layers beneath the site. Although asbestos hazards have been documented for years, the installation is not included in Denmark's current cleanup program.

Note: Bluie West Two  was a planned World War II United States military site in southwest Greenland that proved unusable and was ultimately rejected.

Bluie West 3 (Simiutaq) U.S. Operation:1942–1958

Established as a weather and radio station supporting aircraft operations at Narsarsuaq, Bluie West 3 now contains approximately 4,400 metric tons of abandoned military waste. The site includes rusting oil drums, construction materials, battery components, shipwreck debris, pipelines, and large abandoned fuel tanks. Environmental investigations have documented severe petroleum contamination, including mobile free-phase oil capable of migrating through soil. Elevated PCB concentrations, lead contamination, and petroleum impacts to nearby marine sediments and mussels make Simiutaq one of Greenland's most extensively documented contaminated military sites.

Bluie West 4 (Marraq / Teague Airfield) U.S. Operation: 1942–1948

Built as an emergency landing field and weather station south of Nuuk, Marraq was abandoned with thousands of oil drums, diesel generators, vehicles, radio equipment, barges, and buried scrap metal. Investigators estimated that at least 120,000 liters of diesel fuel contaminated the site, with petroleum odors still evident decades after abandonment. Surveys also identified asbestos, PCBs, and mercury contamination. Officials concluded that pollutants posed potential risks to freshwater ecosystems, marine organisms, and shellfish inhabiting the adjacent fjord. Cleanup operations began in 2019 but remain unfinished.

Bluie West 5 (Aasiaat) U.S. Operation:1942–1958

Bluie West 5 functioned as a weather station near present-day Aasiaat during World War II. Although the site has been used for other purposes over the years, environmental investigations have clearly identified American military debris, including deteriorating buildings and stockpiles of rusted oil drums. More than five metric tons of hazardous or contaminated waste remain. Soil testing has documented elevated concentrations of lead and cadmium associated with the former U.S. installation. Questions regarding present ownership have complicated decisions concerning remediation.

Bluie West 6 (Pituffik / Thule Air Base / Pituffik Space Base) U.S. Operation:1942–Present

Originally established as the Bluie West 6 weather station during World War II, the installation expanded dramatically under the secret Project Blue Jay and became Thule Air Base in 1952, now known as Pituffik Space Base. The installation remains the only active U.S. military base in Greenland. Historic investigations have identified at least fifty waste disposal areas surrounding the base, including former missile silos converted into landfills. Long-term PCB contamination has been documented in nearby marine environments, but because the base remains operational, it has largely been excluded from Denmark's national cleanup program.

Bluie West 7 / Navy 26 / Grønnedal

U.S. Operation:1943–1951 (later operated by Denmark until 2012)

Established near Ivigtut during World War II, Bluie West 7 was accompanied by the adjacent U.S. Navy 26 installation, later transferred to Denmark and renamed Grønnedal. Investigations have documented extensive petroleum and groundwater contamination migrating toward Arsuk Fjord. Large American dump sites contain vehicles, hazardous wastes, and an estimated 20,000 cubic meters of discarded material. Underwater surveys have identified additional debris in the fjord, including a tanker truck, crane, tracked vehicle, and other equipment. Cleanup costs are now estimated at between DKK 100 and 200 million.

Bluie West 8 (Kangerlussuaq / Søndre Strømfjord) U.S. Operation:1941–1992‍ ‍

Built before the United States entered World War II, Kangerlussuaq became one of Greenland's most important military airfields and later served Cold War radar operations before transitioning into Greenland's principal civilian airport. The United States left behind oil drum dumps, unexploded ammunition, scrap metal, and abandoned military structures. Local residents have criticized the burning of open landfills containing American military waste. Greenlandic officials have also alleged that diesel fuel was intentionally dumped into nearby lakes for mosquito control, with reports that some waters still exhibit petroleum odors decades later.

Bluie West 9 (Cruncher Island) U.S. Operation:1942–1986

Constructed to support weather observations and aviation operations associated with Kangerlussuaq, Bluie West 9 remained active for more than four decades. The abandoned installation contains building ruins, generators, vehicles, cables, pipes, waste dumps, and approximately 1.5 metric tons of discarded batteries. Environmental investigations documented elevated concentrations of petroleum, lead, cadmium, copper, zinc, and mercury in soils. Approximately eleven metric tons of hazardous or contaminated waste remain. Danish and Greenlandic authorities have identified the site as a priority for future cleanup.

Part II — The Bluie East Installations

Bluie East 1 (Ikerasassuaq / Prince Christian Sound) U.S. Operation:1942–1945 (later operated by the Danish Meteorological Institute) No Photo

Established as a weather and radio station near Cape Farewell, Bluie East 1 played an important role in Allied North Atlantic weather forecasting during World War II. The installation consisted of a harbor, power plant, radio facilities, living quarters, and support buildings connected by a long wooden staircase. Unlike many other American installations in Greenland, little is known about what environmental contamination remains. Danish authorities report that no formal environmental assessment has been conducted, leaving uncertainty about whether hazardous materials from the wartime occupation persist beneath or around the site. 

Bluie East 2 (Ikkatteq) U.S. Operation:1942–1947

Ikkatteq was one of the largest American airfields on Greenland's east coast, serving as both a refueling stop and radio surveillance station with a wartime population approaching 600 personnel. When abandoned, the base contained more than 100,000 oil drums scattered across the landscape, dozens of military vehicles, batteries, collapsed buildings, and structures containing asbestos. Environmental investigations documented extensive petroleum contamination together with PCBs, lead, and cadmium. Authorities concluded that contamination posed direct risks to both wildlife and people. Although cleanup began years ago, significant remediation remains unfinished.

Bluie East 3 (Walrus Bay) U.S. Operation: 1942–1945

This small weather and radio station on Greenland's east coast supported Allied operations with a complement of approximately fourteen personnel. Although relatively modest in size, environmental investigators classified the site's overall environmental impact as significant. Abandoned structures, fuel drum storage areas, and military debris remained after the American withdrawal. Scrap metal was removed in 2022, but no comprehensive environmental investigation has been completed, leaving unanswered questions regarding remaining soil and groundwater contamination. 

Bluie East 4 (Ella Island) U.S. Operation: 1942–1945 No Photo

Located within what is now Northeast Greenland National Park, Bluie East 4 served as a wartime weather and radio station. Limited information survives regarding the installation, although investigators have identified abandoned building foundations likely containing petroleum residues and mercury. Engineering studies characterize the site's environmental impact as moderate, but its protected status has limited investigation and cleanup activities. Consequently, the full extent of contamination remains unknown.

Bluie East 5 (Eskimonæs) U.S. Operation: 1942–1943 No photo

Bluie East 5 was the northernmost American installation on Greenland's east coast. The original station was destroyed during a German raid in 1943, after which operations were relocated elsewhere. Environmental investigations suggest that mercury contamination and petroleum residues remain at the original location. Because the site lies within a protected national park, it has been excluded from Denmark's post-2018 cleanup initiative. No comprehensive environmental assessment has yet been completed, leaving the extent of contamination uncertain.

Cape Cort Adelaer U.S. Operation: Approximately 1943–1945

Cape Cort Adelaer served as a small weather and radio station supporting Allied operations along Greenland's eastern coast. Investigators have identified abandoned fuel storage tanks and numerous building foundations remaining from the American occupation. Engineering assessments conclude that the site likely contains mercury, petroleum contamination, asbestos, and heavy metals, resulting in an overall environmental impact classified as significant. Although historical research has begun, no comprehensive environmental investigation has yet been completed.

Skjoldungen (Louis Boplads) U.S. Operation: 1943–Approximately 1948

Constructed as a weather station during World War II, Skjoldungen appears to have been abandoned largely intact. Engineering investigations describe large quantities of scattered waste, including chemicals, broken glass, discarded clothing, medication residues, and other debris left where they were originally discarded. Environmental assessments conclude that mercury, petroleum contamination, heavy metals, and asbestos are likely present, resulting in a significant environmental impact. Historical investigations are underway, although no comprehensive field assessment has yet been completed.

Atterbery Dome (Comanche Bay) U.S. Operation: Approximately 1943–1945

Atterbery Dome was a small radio and rescue station established during World War II along Greenland's east coast. Although modest in size, engineering investigations classify its environmental impact as significant. Remaining contamination is believed to include petroleum residues, mercury, asbestos, and heavy metals associated with deteriorating military infrastructure. Authorities have commissioned historical research to better document the installation before determining whether a full environmental investigation or cleanup should proceed.

Part III — Camp Century, the Pituffik Research Camps, Ice Cap Sites, and DYE Stations

Camp Century U.S. Operation:1959–1966(dangerous nuclear reactor operated 1960–1964)

Constructed beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet approximately 150 miles east of Thule Air Base, Camp Century was the most ambitious American military installation ever built in the Arctic. Although presented publicly as a scientific research station, it also served as a testbed for Project Iceworm, a classified proposal to deploy nuclear missiles beneath the ice.

Politiken reports: "When the camp was abandoned, the nuclear reactor had been removed, but an estimated 24 million liters of radioactive cooling wastewater, 200,000 liters of diesel fuel, sewage, and roughly 9,000 metric tons of construction debris were left entombed beneath the ice. As climate warming accelerates ice loss, researchers warn these materials could eventually re-enter the environment."

Military Poisons note: NASA’s summary of the underlying scientific research describes the waste inventory somewhat differently. According to NASA, Camp Century contains approximately 200,000 liters of diesel fuel, 24 million liters of wastewater, including sewage, an unknown quantity of low-level radioactive waste, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). NASA's description does not characterize the entire 24 million liters of wastewater as "radioactive cooling wastewater."

Camp Nuto (Nunatarssuaq Take Off / Camp Red Rock) U.S. Operation:Approximately 1953–1960s   No Photo

‍Camp Nuto was one of several research facilities established near Thule Air Base to study the engineering properties of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Researchers conducted experiments on ice ramps and vehicle operations under Arctic conditions that supported later military construction projects. Environmental investigations indicate petroleum contamination remains at the site, although the overall environmental impact has been classified as moderate. Because Camp Nuto lies within the active Pituffik military complex, it has not been included in Denmark's national cleanup program and has received only limited environmental evaluation.

Camp Tuto (Thule Take Off) U.S. Operation:1954–Early 1960s‍ ‍

Located roughly 25 kilometers southeast of Thule Air Base, Camp Tuto became one of the Army's principal Arctic engineering laboratories. Approximately 450 personnel were stationed there to study tunnel construction beneath glaciers and excavation through frozen permafrost. Engineers built a 400-meter tunnel within the ice to evaluate the feasibility of large underground military facilities. Little public information exists concerning waste left behind, and no comprehensive environmental investigation has been reported. Because the camp remains within the broader Pituffik military area, it has not been scheduled for cleanup.

Camp Fistclench U.S. Operation:Mid-1950s–1959 No Photo

Camp Fistclench served as the direct predecessor to Camp Century. Constructed beneath the ice using covered trenches, the installation allowed Army engineers to test construction techniques later employed for the much larger Camp Century project. Scientific work focused on snow mechanics, ice behavior, and the effects of explosives on glacial ice. Following completion of Camp Century, Camp Fistclench was abandoned. Little documentation exists concerning remaining debris or contamination, and no comprehensive environmental assessment has been reported.

Ice Cap Site I U.S. Operation:1953–1954 to late 1950s No Photo

Ice Cap Site I formed part of an experimental network of radar stations constructed on the Greenland Ice Sheet to provide early warning of potential Soviet air attacks against Thule Air Base. Harsh environmental conditions and the logistical difficulty of maintaining the station limited its operational life. Publicly available information does not identify what equipment or waste remains beneath the ice, and no formal environmental assessment has been conducted.

Ice Cap Site II  U.S. Operation:1953–1954 to late 1950s No Photo

Constructed alongside Ice Cap Site I, this radar installation supported the defense of Thule Air Base during the early years of the Cold War. The station was abandoned after only a few years because maintaining remote facilities on the moving ice sheet proved impractical. Little information is available regarding remaining infrastructure or environmental contamination, and no comprehensive environmental investigation has been completed.

DYE-1 (Red River)   U.S. Operation:1950s–1988

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DYE-1 was one of four massive radar stations comprising Greenland's portion of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, established to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America across the Arctic. The mountaintop installation featured a large radar dome and extensive support facilities. Following closure in 1988, the Greenland Self-Government reportedly undertook cleanup activities, burying waste dumps and storage areas. Unlike many former U.S. installations, DYE-1 is generally considered to have undergone substantial remediation, although little environmental data has been published.

 

DYE-2 (Sea Bass) U.S. Operation: Late 1950s–1980s

Built directly on the Greenland Ice Sheet, DYE-2 monitored Arctic airspace around the clock as part of the DEW Line. Fuel tanks and heavy infrastructure were embedded within the ice. The station was abandoned rapidly at the end of its operational life, leaving large quantities of equipment behind with the expectation that the ice sheet would permanently entomb the facility.

DYE-3 (Sob Story) U.S. Operation: Late 1950s–1980s

Like DYE-2, DYE-3 operated as an elevated radar station supported by ski-equipped aircraft that delivered personnel and supplies onto the Greenland Ice Sheet. In 1972, a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport crash-landed near the station. After useful equipment was removed, much of the aircraft was buried within the ice. The station itself was abandoned with substantial infrastructure remaining.  

Politiken reports that the United States contributed funds for cleanup at DYE-2 and DYE-3, but publicly available records I reviewed do not substantiate that claim.

The documented cleanup agreement appears to have been financed by Denmark and Greenland, not the United States.

DYE-4 (Big Gun) U.S. Operation:1950s–1991

Perched atop a mountain near Kulusuk, DYE-4 was the easternmost radar station in Greenland's DEW Line. The installation contained massive rotating radar antennas housed within a large radome that monitored northern airspace throughout the Cold War. After closure in 1991, the station was dismantled by Greenland authorities in 1994, and much of the material was buried in local landfills. Only foundations remain visible today. No formal environmental assessment has been reported following the demolition.

This section highlights a striking contrast. Many of the World War II installations were abandoned with visible debris—oil drums, vehicles, buildings, and dumps. The Cold War facilities often left a different legacy: buried infrastructure, petroleum products, and, in the case of Camp Century, radioactive wastewater and diesel fuel sealed beneath the ice. As the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to thin, these hidden legacies may become increasingly important to environmental monitoring and international policy.

Part IV — LORAN Stations, Radio Stations, Artillery Sites, and Other Installations

Gamatron U.S. Operation:1942–1958

Established near present-day Qaqortoq, Gamatron served as a weather station, radio station, and submarine observation post supporting Allied operations in the North Atlantic. After the Americans departed, they left 34 buildings, six storage areas containing hundreds of oil drums, multiple waste dumps, and an estimated 175–185 metric tons of abandoned military waste. Environmental investigations found contamination severe enough that water from a nearby lake was declared unsuitable for drinking because of pollution originating from an abandoned dump.

 

Qutdleq U.S. Operation: 1960–1978

Qutdleq was constructed as a LORAN (Long Range Navigation) station on a small island in southeastern Greenland. Following its closure, numerous deteriorating buildings, communications masts, and large fuel storage tanks remained on the site. While the abandoned infrastructure is well documented, no comprehensive environmental investigation has yet been completed, leaving uncertainty regarding possible petroleum contamination or hazardous materials associated with the former installation.

Orssuiagssuaq U.S. Operation:1960–1977

Built as another LORAN navigation station, Orssuiagssuaq was abandoned with communications towers, storage tanks, ruined buildings, and deteriorating barracks still standing decades after closure. Although the physical remains have been documented photographically, authorities have not yet completed an environmental assessment. Historical investigations are expected before decisions are made regarding cleanup or remediation of the site.

Sabine Island U.S. Operation:1959–Early 1960s

Sabine Island housed a small unmanned radio beacon located within a protected bird sanctuary. Although the station itself was modest, approximately thirty-five discarded industrial batteries remain near the antenna building, many with exposed lead cores. Authorities have concluded that the battery dump presents a potential source of heavy metal contamination. Because the installation lies within a protected wildlife area, no formal environmental assessment or cleanup has been scheduled.

 

Nipisat U.S. Operation: 1954–1975

Nipisat served as a LORAN navigation station on Greenland's west coast. Environmental investigations documented multiple oil and gasoline storage tanks together with at least three confirmed petroleum spills. Engineers concluded that the site also contains PCBs, pesticides, mercury, heavy metals, and asbestos. One municipal official described the abandoned station as "something of a disaster," noting that extensive vandalism had left the once-important military installation in a severely deteriorated condition despite its location in an area of exceptional natural value.

 Angissoq U.S. Operation: 1963–1994 No Photo

One of Greenland's last LORAN navigation stations, Angissoq remained in operation until satellite navigation rendered the system obsolete. The abandoned installation includes remnants of twenty-three buildings, a power plant, fuel storage facilities, and coastal waste dumps. Environmental investigators documented petroleum contamination near former fuel tanks and observed that coastal erosion is gradually exposing buried waste to the sea. A comprehensive environmental investigation has not yet been completed.

Cape Atholl U.S. Operation: 1954–1972

Located near Thule Air Base, Cape Atholl operated as a U.S. Coast Guard LORAN navigation station. Environmental investigations documented severe petroleum contamination, including free-phase oil, PCB-contaminated building materials, batteries, cable scrap, burned refuse, and mixed waste buried in coastal bluffs. Investigators observed erosion exposing buried debris directly onto the shoreline, creating potential pathways into the marine environment. The site also presents possible risks to wildlife, including walruses using nearby beaches. Danish and Greenlandic authorities are planning cleanup operations.

Artillery Point U.S. Operation: 1941–1946

Artillery Point defended the strategically important Narsarsuaq airfield with two 155-mm coastal guns during World War II. Following the war, approximately seventeen metric tons of military waste remained, including abandoned buildings, construction materials, and a small landfill. Environmental investigations identified petroleum contamination together with low concentrations of lead and cadmium. Because the contamination is relatively limited and the site possesses historical significance, the National Museum of Greenland has recommended that the area remain largely undisturbed.

 

Camp Corbett U.S. Operation: 1942–1958

Camp Corbett functioned as a communications station supporting the nearby Narsarsuaq air base. The installation contained emergency generators, fuel tanks, hundreds of utility poles, multiple dumps, and buried waste disposal areas. Investigators estimate that at least 377 metric tons of military waste remain, including approximately 314 metric tons classified as hazardous or contaminated. Contaminants include PCBs, asbestos, heavy metals, and tar residues. Cleanup has begun, but officials report that massive reinforced concrete foundations will require extensive excavation and blasting before remediation can be completed.

Conclusion

While the Trump administration is “negotiating” with Denmark for access to three additional military installations in Greenland, and President Trump is making threatening remarks about U.S. intentions, the talks between Washington, Copenhagen, and Nuuk remain fixated on sovereignty and strategic positioning. Consequently, a critical geopolitical blind spot persists: the massive environmental liabilities scattered across dozens of legacy American military installations. These sites contain a hazardous catalog of contaminated soils, abandoned landfills, deteriorating fuel infrastructure, PCBs, petroleum, unexploded ordnance, and PFAS. Most critically, Camp Century holds radioactive and toxic waste entombed beneath the rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet.

Although President Trump’s critique of Danish spending in Greenland was likely unmoored from these specific ecological realities, it inadvertently highlighted a profound structural failure. The paltry sums Copenhagen has allocated to investigate and remediate this contamination pale in comparison to the actual scale of the crisis. Remediation at Camp Century alone could soar into billions of euros.

How, then, in the face of this catastrophic reality, can the Danish government continue to hide behind passive diplomatic platitudes?

While the Danish Foreign Minister publicly insists that Denmark will protect Greenland’s independence from political takeover, why are they not screaming from the rooftops about eighty years of toxic American negligence?

The environmental criminality cannot be overstated while Copenhagen treats this assault as a footnote. As Danish officials sit at the negotiating table to grant the U.S. military even more access to Greenlandic soil, why are they not aggressively demanding full, immediate remediation as a non-negotiable prerequisite? How can Copenhagen claim to stand for Greenlandic sovereignty while letting the United States get away with a multi-billion-dollar ecological crime?

Please see the Greenland Appendix containing a spreadsheet that displays the kinds of information shown here on all 36 abandoned sites in Greenland.

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Wamuyu Manyara is country director for Trócaire Malawi and Tarcizio Kalaundi is its climate resilience officer.

This week, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) faces a significant decision that will determine its ability to address the harms being done by climate change.

Discussions on the Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must get the scale and accessibility of the Fund right. Failure to do so would risk undermining its role to channel finance to countries ex­periencing loss and damage, and undermine obligations to climate justice and human rights.

This discussion could not come at a more pressing time. As loss and damage (L&D) continues to escalate globally, and as the world teeters perilously close to the Paris Agreement’s critical 1.5C warming limit, the FRLD also faces the very real danger of running out of funding in 2027.

As Nigeria rails at loss and damage “mirage”, fund boss assures money is coming

Experts calculate that in 2025, L&D finance needs for climate-vulnerable countries may have reached USD$937 billion. Last year’s major impacts included a series of extremely destructive cyclones that hit the Philippines, estimated to have caused over $5 billion in losses, while in Jamaica, the losses and damage caused by Hurricane Melissa were estimated at $12.2 billion.

The bill for just one of these disasters would exhaust the Fund’s existing resources many times over. While the costs and human rights violations rack up, almost four years after being agreed at COP27, the FRLD remains critically underfunded.

Pledges to the Fund ($822 million) are just a fraction of 1% of annual loss and damage needs, and only around half of those pledges ($448 million) have been paid into the Fund so far.

Meanwhile, those who have done nothing to cause the climate crisis are facing its worst – and intensifying – impacts and are being left to foot the bill for the damages already incurred, not to mention the severe non-economic costs to communities. It is therefore crucial that the FRLD’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy urgently brings in far more L&D finance.

Contributor conundrum

Many developed states will claim that additional countries should provide L&D finance. This, however, is a distraction – particularly considering the deep abyss between the contributions of developed states that are obligated to pay and their fair share as calculated according to their wealth and historical emissions. Furthermore, some states and regions that are currently not obligated to contribute are already doing so. 

Analysis reveals that, even in the highly inequitable scenario where all states including those who have contributed nothing to causing the climate crisis were to pay towards L&D finance, wealthy countries would still be responsible for the vast majority of L&D finance.

New loss and damage fund could run out of money next year

The Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must focus political discussions on the ability of rich and highly polluting states to raise public, grant-based L&D finance that is new and additional to existing climate finance obligations and overseas development assistance.

Developed states have the means to pay and the FRLD should introduce mandatory and progressive mechanisms to make the biggest polluters, including the ultra-rich and fossil fuel corporations, pay for their climate harms. 

African impacts

Increasingly unpredictable seasons and more frequent and extreme events are driving food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement and other human rights risks in climate-vulnerable countries, and communities facing these escalating and compounding impacts must be centred in FRLD policies.

In Ethiopia, 2023 saw 24 million people affected by five back-to-back failed rains leading to severe food and water shortages, including a 90% crop loss in drought-affected areas. Eleven million people required food assistance, and over 500,000 people were displaced. Meanwhile, the 2023–24 floods and the 2024 Gofa landslide disrupted or destroyed health facilities, displaced thousands, and led to outbreaks of cholera, malaria, and measles.

Comment: Let’s tax luxury air travel to fund climate adaptation and loss and damage

Today, Somalia is facing one of its most severe drought emergencies in recent history driven by climate extremes. Malnutrition rates continue to exceed projections and previous devastating records, with 1.9 million children in Somalia acutely malnourished.

In Malawi, child stunting had significantly reduced, but climate impacts are now affecting children’s growth and development. Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023 was one of the worst on record, causing over 1,200 deaths, displacing half a million people, and causing damages exceeding $500 million. Recovery needs for four major disasters between 2015 and 2023 are estimated at $1.7 billion, equivalent to more than a quarter of Malawi’s 2026-2027 budget. 

Funding for communities

Access to community grants in the southern African country, however, has catalysed local responses to L&D that coordinate around immediate and long-term needs and restoring livelihoods.

Direct access to the FRLD for climate-vulnerable countries and communities, with community-centric planning, is essential to ensure that the Fund can respond to the needs of people experiencing the worst impacts of climate change, through prompt and flexible mechanisms that do not hinder recovery options.

Stepping up to fill the FRLD through an ambitious and needs-based Resource Mobilisation Strategy is the bare minimum that wealthy states can and must do. It is, after all, an obligation that flows from the international duties of cooperation and prevention of harm, and from the obligation to provide reparation when harm occurs. Failure to do so would further erode climate justice and human rights for communities on the frontline of loss and damage.

The post The loss and damage fund needs far more finance to deliver climate justice appeared first on Climate Home News.

Between the view, the marshes, and the birds, Liat Meitzenheimer concedes the drive along California State Route 37 is scenic. Still, she avoids it for two reasons: congestion and flooding.

The highway, about half of which is two-lane, is often backed up with people commuting between affordable communities in Solano County to the east and jobs in pricier Sonoma and Marin counties to the west. It also is a regional link to Napa Valley and other destinations, much of it built on embankments, bridges, and causeways that span marshes precariously close to San Pablo Bay. That makes it prone to flooding, which has led to occasional closures. 

“I don’t go that route whenever we have the potential of flooding, because I know how crazy it can get,” said Meitzenheimer, a retiree who lives in Vallejo, not far from the highway’s eastern terminus at Interstate 80. 

These problems will worsen as the population grows and climate change brings more frequent and intense storms. Without adaptation measures, portions of the road are at risk of permanent inundation by 2050.

The state Department of Transportation and the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission are pursuing a $500 million project that would, over five years, remake portions of the 21-mile highway. It would replace one of five bridges with one 5 feet taller, raise two one-mile sections by up to 8 inches, add a carpool and bus lane in each direction, and restore a tidal marsh and other ecosystems. 

Not everyone thinks that goes far enough. Some want the highway moved several miles inland. Others favor a far more ambitious $10 billion project that would take at least 20 years. It would raise almost the entire roadway, add a lane for cyclists and pedestrians, and perhaps include railway tracks. To do anything less, advocates of this approach say, overlooks two pressing issues.

“Highway expansion does not solve congestion and will worsen climate change,” said Zack Deutsch-Gross, who leads TransForm CA, a sustainable transportation advocacy organization. “This project is pretty egregious,” because the highway, if left where it is, “in the long term will be underwater.”

The challenges facing SR-37 are not unique. California’s iconic Highway 1, has been repeatedly closed due to floods, fires, and rockslides. Coastal cities like Miami Beach and Atlantic City are scrambling to harden infrastructure against rising seas and frequent inundation. Hurricanes routinely leave island and low-lying communities isolated by deluged causeways. Addressing these problems requires tremendous investment — bolstering bridges alone could cost $170 billion by 2050. Failing to do so could bring grave consequences. Without further adaptation, annual damage from coastal flooding worldwide could account for 2.9 percent of global gross domestic product by 2100. That’s up from 0.3 percent just 11 years ago.

California is among the states most aggressively planning for a warmer world. How it proceeds with SR-37 will show just how serious it is about adapting roadways to climate change.

California Highway 37 regularly floods during severe rain, as it did during an atmospheric river that dumped enough rain in January 2023 to require closing the two westbound lanes. Alan Dep / Marin Independent Journal via Getty Images

Highway 37 began as Sears Point Tollway, which opened in 1928 to connect Marin and Solano counties north of San Francisco. California bought it 10 years later, and in the decades since has widened it as the road became an increasingly important commuter and freight route. The road is essentially a causeway and crosses an intricate system of wetlands, sloughs, rivers, and creeks at the northern end of San Pablo Bay. It also traverses a federally protected wildlife refuge, a state managed wildlife area, and an immense tidal marsh.

Transportation planners have considered widening, raising, or relocating portions of the road since the 1950s, but rarely proceeded due to the cost and environmental impact. That’s become less of a concern as repeated flooding and sea level rise — California could see an average increase of 10 inches by 2050 and 1.6 to 3.1 feet by 2100 — become more urgent problems.

Fraser Shilling, who leads the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, started researching SR-37 in 2010, which is about when Caltrans started considering sea level rise. His work presented a variety of ways to bolster it against that inevitability. “The least resilient was what they’re currently building, which is the highway on a berm,” he said. “The most resilient was to move the highway inland.”

A raised highway would still rest precariously on mud, Shilling said. He favors the strategic retreat of moving it as much as 5 miles inland. “There’s always been a problem that it goes through the marshes,” Shilling said. “You would never ever get permission to build that today.”

Barring that, he said, the state and region face irreconcilable choices. Without sufficient hardening, the highway could wash away. But too much could make the shoreline erode more quickly. 

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission considered relocating the highway, but chose to focus on more feasible projects given the cost and time constraints, said agency spokesperson John Goodwin. “We would love to see the long-term projects completed sooner rather than later, but recognizing that [it] would take many billions of dollars, and probably 20 years, we’ve got needs that need to be satisfied,” he said.

The agency has secured $270 million to replace the Novato Creek Bridge in what Goodwin called the first part of the long-term project –– that would accommodate sea-level rise and storm surges on SR-37 until 2130. He said starting with quicker, relatively cheaper projects will also give the agency enough time to find the $10 billion needed for the long-term project.

The Sanibel Causeway is the only road connecting Sanibel Island with mainland Florida. The state reopened it in 15 days. Ricardo Arduengo / AFP via Getty Images

In 2022, Hurricane Ian flooded the 3-mile Sanibel Causeway, which connects that Florida island to the mainland. While the state managed to reopen it in 15 days, the experience has become a cautionary tale for other islands. 

Jill Gambill, a researcher at Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology, began developing an adaptation plan for Tybee Island in 2012 –– the first of its kind by a local government in the state. An 11-mile causeway connects it to the mainland near Savannah. Flooding closed it four times in 2024, leaving residents stranded for as long as five hours.

A hurricane has not made landfall in Georgia since 1979, but hurricanes Irma and Matthew brought the highest water levels since measurement began in 1935. “If we were to get hit by, even a category two or a category three storm here, where it’s a direct hit, that would be catastrophic,” Gambill said. 

The state, which maintains Highway 80, repaved and raised it 8 inches in 2019. Elevating it more substantially could help reduce flooding but require widening the base, threatening important marsh habitat. It would also be expensive, and the state Department of Transportation, which did not respond to a request for comment, has yet to commit the funding. 

Jo E. Sias, a civil engineer and professor who studies pavement design at the University of New Hampshire, said rising seas also bring hidden problems. As groundwater tables rise, they intersect with pavement below the surface, weakening the road and leading to faster deterioration, she said. The increased moisture in the soil caused by precipitation and sea level can weaken the road and potentially halve its lifetime.

There is growing interest in nature-based solutions. When the Sanibel Island Causeway disappeared, for example, segments near small, self-contained “pocket beaches” remained largely intact when others washed away. “Pocket beaches, beach nourishment projects, dune systems,” Sias said, listing possible solutions. “Anything that you can do to minimize the energy of the water as it’s coming across the roads is going to reduce the propensity for washout.”

Tybee Island recently added three rain gardens to bolster roads around Highway 80 through funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the city. A future phase of the project would build living shorelines, which use bags of oyster shells, smooth cordgrass, and other vegetation to absorb energy from waves.

Jason Evans, the executive director at Stetson University’s Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience, sees an opportunity to strengthen both habitats and highways. Oyster reefs, for instance, benefit the ecosystem and grow vertically as seas rise, unlike seawalls. 

Evans said flooding in low-lying southeastern communities is increasing as seas rise. That makes it essential to consider where roads lead and how they are used when developing mitigation plans. It makes little sense to raise a road by six feet if what’s at the other end hasn’t been prepared as well. “You might have an elevated road going out to a flooded island,” he said. 

There are also questions of equity. Residents of coastal communities tend to be wealthier than those living inland. Using tax revenue to elevate a causeway or bridge “so the millionaires and billionaires can get to their beach house” denies funding to projects that could serve a wider swath of the community, Evans said.

Ethan Elkind, who leads the climate program at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said the Golden State’s approach to transportation conflicts with its climate goals, though he concedes fixing SR-37 is complicated. Many of those who use it commute to rural jobs in wine country or in low-density suburbs. Greater job density would allow public transit to drop workers at fewer, more central locations, “as opposed to needing small-scale transit to help workers reach dispersed locations,” Elkind said. 

Dense, affordable housing in Marin and Sonoma counties would help too by reducing the number of commuters. “Instead, those communities, for decades now, have really put up the gates to any new development,” Elkind said. He added that there’s still time to greenlight more housing development, shore up the roadway, and build a high-capacity bus lane.

As for plans to expand the highway, Hana Cregar, associate director of climate equity at the Greenlining Institute, said people are starting to see the downsides of adding lanes. A Transportation for America survey found that only 10 percent of respondents consider that the best solution to reducing traffic. It may help explain how the project is being pitched.

“The way that this highway expansion project is aiming to rebrand under a climate resilience lens is unique,” Cregar said, “because I think it’s aiming to hide the flaws in this project by painting it as solving a very real issue.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to build a highway in the age of climate change on Jul 9, 2026.

For decades, Jon Zehr was haunted by an organism he knew was there — but couldn’t see.

It all started in the ‘90s on a research boat in the middle of the ocean. Zehr was an oceanographer studying nitrogen-fixing bacteria — simple, microbial life forms that could pull the element straight from the air, making it bioavailable to plants and animals. Scientists at the time had only seriously studied one species of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the entire ocean, but Zehr wanted to change that. His plan was to gather and test samples of seawater with the hope that he might find something that other scientists had missed.

Left: Jon Zehr (bottom center) sits aboard a research vessel. Right: Zehr studies nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the lab. Courtesy of Jon Zehr.

Zehr’s plans involved something pretty cutting-edge for the time: DNA. He gathered seawater samples and ran tests for the presence of the gene for nitrogenase, the enzyme that gives bacteria the ability to pull nitrogen out of the air. If he got a hit, it would hopefully mean the seawater contained some new kind of nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

And it worked. Almost immediately, he found traces of a species of nitrogen-fixing bacteria previously unknown to science. Looking at the genes themselves, he could get a pretty good idea of what this new bacteria should look like. It was likely a unicellular cyanobacteria, around 3 micrometers in size, that should fluoresce orange under the microscope. Full of anticipation, he popped the seawater samples under the microscope, expecting to see that bacteria everywhere.

Instead, he found nothing. There weren’t any organisms in the sample that matched the right description.

Surprised, Zehr repeated the process over and over. He tested samples of seawater from the tropical waters of Hawaii and the southern Caribbean, all the way to the cold waters in the Arctic. Again and again, the genetic signature surfaced but not the visible bacteria. It was as if he had discovered a footprint without an animal.

But he didn’t want to stop looking. He knew that any new discovery could represent a vital link in the Earth’s fragile nitrogen cycle. “This one I kept chasing, because it’s globally important,” Zehr said. 

To understand Jon’s obsession, it helps to start with a peculiar biological constraint — a cruel joke, as one scientist put it — at the heart of all life on Earth. It goes like this: All living organisms need the element nitrogen to survive. It’s a key part of proteins, DNA, and RNA. But while our atmosphere is absolutely packed with nitrogen, the one enzyme that can pull nitrogen from the air so that living organisms can actually use it basically falls apart in the presence of oxygen. So even though plants, animals, and fungi are constantly surrounded by nitrogen in the air, they can’t get a hold of it on their own. 

The only organisms that can actually pull this off are ones that can survive without oxygen: super simple bacteria and archaea. That means the entire natural world relies on a relatively small number of microscopic species to make nitrogen usable by more complex forms of life.

Animals, plants, and fungi rely on simple microbes like bacteria and archaea for nitrogen. Jesse Nichols / Grist

This biological bottleneck has had major impacts on human civilization. Nitrogen is a major component of fertilizer, since plants need it to grow. Enriching soil with nitrogen drastically increases crop yields — important for feeding a growing population. Centuries ago, fertilizer was in such short supply that countries fought wars over islands covered in nitrogen-rich bird guano. In the early 20th century, German scientists created an industrial method to create synthetic, or lab-made, fertilizer. While this invention saved billions of lives from starvation, it also wreaked havoc on the environment. Producing synthetic fertilizer uses a massive amount of energy, and the overuse of fertilizer has polluted the water enough to lead to massive “dead zones” in the ocean. 

These dueling problems — the consequences of too much and too little nitrogen — have led scientists to muse about innovations like self-fertilizing plants. But despite these dreams, researchers hadn’t been able to develop a form of complex life capable of fixing its own nitrogen. It seemed to be an ironclad rule of biology that no organism from the complex side of the tree of life could pull nitrogen out of the air.

Which made it all the more puzzling that Jon Zehr’s particular type of nitrogen-fixing bacteria didn’t seem to be playing by the usual rules. His research team had plenty of the organism’s DNA, but no actual organism. Not only that, but the more they studied it, the less the bacteria’s DNA seemed to make sense. They could tell from its genetic markers that it was photosynthetic bacteria, but it didn’t actually seem to have the genes to photosynthesize. In fact, it seemed to have lost about 80 percent of its entire genome, including several genes it should technically need to survive. The organism seemed less like a complete bacterium than a collection of absences. How was it even alive?

After years of studying this puzzle, Zehr started to notice a pattern: Every sample of seawater that contained the mystery bacteria DNA also contained DNA for one specific type of algae. What if the reason that he had never seen the bacteria under the microscope was because it was hiding in plain sight, inside another organism? That might also explain how the bacteria could survive, even with all those missing genes. 

Zehr began to suspect the algae was the missing piece he had been chasing for decades. What he didn’t know was that someone else had spent years trying to solve the other half of the same puzzle from the other side of the world.

Despite being told her research would be of no use to others, Japanese scientist Kyoko Hagino spent decades of her career studying a type of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii.
Naotomo Umewaka / Grist

Kyoko Hagino is an algae scientist from Kochi, Japan. Just like Jon Zehr, her story also started in the late ‘90s, with a microorganism that changed the course of her career. She was part of a paleontology research team, studying tiny algae fossils on the ocean floor, to piece together information about Earth’s past climate.

Among the countless microscopic fossils she examined, there was one that absolutely captivated her. It was a type of algae called Braarudosphaera bigelowii. Hagino fondly just calls it Bigelowii.

At certain points in Bigelowii’s life, it surrounds itself with this beautiful geometric shell, and Hagino would find these pentagonal skeletons throughout her samples. “When I first spotted Bigelowii, I thought it was in such a beautiful shape,” she said. “It has a very beautiful shape like a jewel.”

But no one really knew anything about the algae living inside. This was what Hagino wanted to study. But no one else seemed to share her fascination.

Braarudosphaera bigelowii in its jewel-like calcified (left) and non-calcified (right) forms.
Courtesy of Kyoko Hagino

“When I first started the research, my boss at the time objected to it,” she said. “[I was told] even if you do such research that nobody reads, it won’t land you a job.”

At the time, Hagino was having trouble finding a position at a university. At the same time, she was taking care of her young kids. And she was moving to a new city where her husband had found work. Everything in her life seemed to be sending the clear message that she should just drop it and find something else to study. But Hagino just couldn’t do that. For whatever reason, there was something about this algae that just absolutely fascinated her, and she wanted to learn everything about it. Even if that meant studying it on her own.

So Hagino and her daughter started taking trips to the beach, collecting samples of seawater in the hopes of finding this elusive algae. Over the years, they ended up taking hundreds of these trips. They did this so often that her daughter genuinely didn’t know that people went to the beach for other reasons, like to go swimming.

“‘The ocean — isn’t that the place to collect seawater?’” Hagino recounted her daughter saying.
  

Kyoko Hagino and her daughter collect samples of seawater. Courtesy of Kyoko Hagino

Hagino would then spend hours at home with the microscope, searching for Bigelowii cells and individually picking them out when she’d find them. This was incredibly time-consuming, but it was kind of the only way to study them. No matter what she did, the cells didn’t seem to want to grow in a test tube. 

For years, Hagino worked on growing a culture without any kind of university salary. To make ends meet, she ended up picking up a part-time job washing test tubes in a lab. One day, she was talking to one of the scientists there, and he suggested adding an unusual ingredient to her culture. It wasn’t a chemical or anything else you’d normally find in the lab. It was tokoroten, a type of traditional Japanese jelly noodle made from seaweed.

To Hagino’s amazement, the noodles were just what Bigelowii needed.

“I saw Bigelowii swimming and increasing in number,” she said. “I was extremely happy.”

Left: Kyoko Hagino holds a bowl of tokoroten, the secret ingredient she used in her Bigelowii culture. Naotomo Umewaka / Grist. Right: A microscope image of Hagino’s culture. Courtesy of Zehr Lab.

Now that she had a culture, she could finally grow enough cells to answer some of the big questions about this organism. And there was one big question at the top of Hagino’s mind. Over the course of her many years studying Bigelowii, she noticed something odd. It had all the normal components of an algae cell. But then it also had something she couldn’t explain — something she had never seen in any textbook. It was a black dot in the center of the algae.

A transmission electron microscope image of a Bigelowii revealed a strange object. Courtesy of Kyoko Hagino

Hagino was preparing to publish a paper on this mysterious dot, when she stumbled upon an article that had just come out in the American journal Science. It described the search for a seemingly invisible nitrogen-fixing bacteria that the author theorized was likely living inside a species of algae. The author of the article was Jon Zehr, and he was talking about Braarudosphaera bigelowii.

Hagino thought about the strange object she had discovered inside Bigelowii. The pieces fit. She ran a genetic test on Bigelowii, and it came out positive: She had found the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that Zehr had spent so many years searching for. 

“I never imagined that someone was doing research on Bigelowii,” she said. “I was shocked to think that I had been surpassed.”

Zehr was also surprised when Hagino reached out to share her discovery with him — the same puzzle, worked on from an ocean away. “Neither one of us knew that the two things went together!” he said.

Hagino and Zehr had both spent their careers trying to solve a scientific puzzle, with no idea that they each held the other’s missing piece. Now that they had a culture, they had the chance to unravel a mystery that would end up going deeper than they’d ever imagined.

Together, they would reveal a level of cooperation that would rewrite a fundamental rule of biology.

Zehr and Hagino look out at the Pacific Ocean. Left: Naotomo Umewaka​ / Grist Right: Jesse Nichols / Grist

Nature is full of symbiotic relationships: two organisms, each helping the other out. The clownfish from Finding Nemo is a good example of this — it looks after its sea anemone partner, in exchange for a safe place to live. But these helpful relationships can get closer and closer. There are organisms that live inside other organisms, like corals, which get food from zooxanthellae algae living in them. And you even have cells that live inside other cells. At a certain point, the relationship becomes so close that we’re not sure where one organism starts and the other begins. 
  
Now, two organisms converging — going from being considered separate entities to part of the same being — is pretty mind-bending, and it’s a line that’s only been crossed a few times in the history of life on Earth. The two famous examples of this are mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell found in every complex life form on Earth, and chloroplasts, the parts of plant cells that use photosynthesis to turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into food. Both of these examples started as independent cells that over time got so close to their partners that they became organelles: little organs inside other cells.
  
But what about Bigelowii and its internal bacteria? There was no doubt the relationship between the two was close. Zehr and Hagino were eager to find out just how the two worked together. So they teamed up. She sent a culture to John’s lab with hopes to visit California as the experiment went on.
  
When the culture arrived at Zehr’s office, he was so excited he took a photo to capture the moment. His team debated over which experiments they were going to run first.  

Jon Zehr smiles as he receives the first Bigelowii culture shipment from Hagino in 2020. Courtesy of Zehr Lab

“We sat around as a lab, and we decided the ten things we were going to do first, because we didn’t know how long the culture would stay alive,” he said.  “And within three days, Covid lockdown started.”

The pandemic threw a wrench in all of their plans. Japan put up very strict travel restrictions that ended up staying in place for years. After all her hard work, Hagino couldn’t join Zehr in person. But the two were still hungry for answers, and they decided that Zehr’s lab should proceed with the tests. Hagino, who had funding from a grant she shared with Zehr, would help as much as she could from afar.
  
And pretty quickly, they started to find clues that the algae and the bacteria’s relationship was not a standard case of symbiosis. Bigelowii and the bacteria always divided at the same time. They also grew at the same rate, and in ways that looked really similar to mitochondria or chloroplasts. 

But the most compelling piece of evidence came from Tyler Coale, a postdoc in Zehr’s lab. He was studying the proteins inside of the two organisms, when he noticed something strange: the bacteria were full of proteins that they didn’t have the genes to make. Instead, these proteins were being produced from extra genes found in Bigelowii. And on the very ends of each of these extra genes, there was the same short DNA sequence that kept showing up over and over.

Tyler Coale looks at Braarudosphaera bigelowii cells under a microscope at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Jesse Nichols / Grist

This pattern reminded Coale of an earlier mystery: The nitrogen-fixing bacteria that had somehow lost many of the genes for proteins it needed to survive. Could Bigelowii be supplying them instead? To find out, he ran an experiment, lining up the missing genes from one organism with the extra genes from the other. The match was striking. For nearly every gene that the bacteria had lost, Bigelowii had evolved an extra copy. And each of those extra genes were tagged with that same sequence of DNA on the end — molecular delivery instructions to send the protein over to the bacteria.

This discovery was huge because this kind of system had only been seen a small handful of times in mitochondria and in chloroplasts and now, in the tiny dot Zehr and Hagino had found inside of Bigelowii. The nitrogen-fixing bacteria were no longer bacteria anymore. It had become a part of Bigelowii, an independent microorganism-turned-organelle.

Zehr and his team decided to call it the Nitroplast.

And that also meant Bigelowii had broken the fundamental rule that only simple organisms like bacteria could pull nitrogen out of the air. The algae are the first known organisms on the complex side of the tree of life that can pull nitrogen out of the air. 

While it’s early days, Coale says the discovery could have big implications for industries like agriculture. “This organism has done what decades of biotech couldn’t do, right? It has engineered this capability into this cell. It’s natural to think that there might be lessons here that we could learn.” he said. 

Zehr, while cautiously optimistic, thinks that self-fertilizing plants are still a long way from becoming a reality. “The downer is it’s really difficult to go from what we know about the nitroplast to engineering a plant,” he said. “But if you don’t take one step, you’re not going to make 100 steps.”

Zehr and Hagino are excited to see where the research takes them next. But for them, it’s never really been about changing the world. They spent their careers studying their tiny pieces of the puzzle, not knowing what they’d find, but with the hope that whatever they discovered could teach them a little more about how the natural world works.

And on that front, there’s so much more to learn.

“This experience has shown that we don’t know which research will be useful and when,” Hagino said.

“Some of the biggest, biggest advances might come from things that you didn’t expect,” Zehr said. “And this might be a case like that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The tiny cell that broke a big rule of biology on Jul 9, 2026.

Huge wind project with one of the country's biggest batteries to become the first to test Queensland's tough new planning framework.

The post Massive wind farm to be first to test Queensland’s tough new planning laws appeared first on Renew Economy.

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Footy for Climate, founded by two ex AFL stars, aims to install solar and battery at more than 500 local sporting clubs by 2030, delivering savings of $5 million.

The post Footy for Climate: Ex AFL stars help football and netball club with new solar and battery system appeared first on Renew Economy.

Tucked among forested slopes and pristine valleys in a corner of northeastern India, young villagers have been busy knocking on doors – hoping to convince sceptical elders that graphite mining would bring much-needed jobs to their distant region.

“The youth in our village migrate to cities for work. What’s better than to have jobs near home?” Gollo Doni, a farmer and secretary of the local youth association, told Climate Home News as he and other members in their 20s discussed the latest meetings between locals and representatives of Oil India Limited (OIL), a state company exploring graphite and vanadium reserves in Arunachal Pradesh.

The mining plans in the state, which is home to more than one-third of India’s graphite reserves and the subject of a sovereignty dispute with China, reflect a push by the Indian government to position itself as a leading producer of battery-grade graphite as the mass rollout of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and power storage drives demand for the mineral.

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An average electric car contains about 60 kg of graphite anode materials, according to the International Energy Agency, and the graphite supply chain is heavily dominated by China, which produces about 80% of the world’s natural graphite and controls more than 90% of global refining.

As Western countries seek to reduce their dependency on China, India’s reserves of graphite and other minerals vital for the switch to clean energy have caught governments’ attention, with Germany signing a critical minerals partnership agreement in January.

Ambitious plans

But hurdles remain to India’s ambitious plans to ramp up critical minerals output, both to position itself as an alternative to China and to meet its own fast-growing needs.

India has a target for 30% of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, and demand for EV lithium batteries looks set to surge close to 35-fold between 2023 and 2035, according to S&P Global Mobility, driven by growth in two- and three-wheelers in the country of 1.4 billion people.

Although domestic manufacturing of EV batteries is expanding, the sector remains at an early stage and India depends heavily on imports from China, South Korea and Japan.

Gollo Doni (left) and other members of the All Pith-Seer Youth Welfare Association meet to discuss graphite exploration around Phop village in Arunachal Pradesh, India (Photo: Cheena Kapoor)

At the same time, it wants to get graphite processing off the ground, aiming to turn its reserves of the mineral – which rank among the world’s 10 biggest – into higher value battery-grade supplies.

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With exploration already underway, the next step should be starting discussions about developing processing facilities – including support from foreign partners, said Kaira Rakheja, South Asia energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

“These exploration and extraction projects have a long gestation period. So even if discussions on processing start now, it will still take a while,” she said, noting India’s simultaneous push to create “rare earth corridors” encompassing every step of production.

Hurdles ahead

India’s graphite reserves are mainly of a lower grade, however, making processing for use in battery anodes more complex, while the country is a late entrant.

“We are not a big player in the market and have missed the bus,” said Aditya Ramji, director of the Global South Clean Transportation Centre at the University of California, Davis.

While exploration work is already underway at several sites in Arunachal Pradesh, and at some places in eastern and southern India, production will take at least two years to start, said Tana Tage, director at the Centre for the Earth Sciences and Himalayan Studies, OIL’s local partner and holder of a 10% stake in the Phop project. 

Graphite powder, used for battery paste, is pictured in a Volkswagen pilot line for battery cell production in Salzgitter, Germany, May 18, 2022. German carmaker will launch its so called “Mission SalzGiga”, a plant for battery cell production, including battery recycling, on July 7, 2022. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer Graphite powder, used for battery paste, is pictured in a Volkswagen pilot line for battery cell production in Salzgitter, Germany, May 18, 2022. German carmaker will launch its so called “Mission SalzGiga”, a plant for battery cell production, including battery recycling, on July 7, 2022. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer

A mine would create about 300 jobs and the project’s partners are discussing options for processing the site’s medium- to high-grade graphite locally, Tage added, despite voicing concern about a lack of technological know-how. 

“India does not have the large-scale, advanced processing capabilities to achieve the ultra-high purity levels required for EV batteries and clean technologies,” he told Climate Home News.

Diversification drive

Despite such challenges, industry experts say India could benefit from the push to find sources of battery graphite other than China.

“We can’t beat China in this space, but we can still create a space for ourselves in buying and selling, as everyone is looking for a space to diversify,” said Rishabh Jain, fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment  and Water, a New Delhi-based think-tank.

India’s government hopes the bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with Germany could help.

A graphite deposits visible on a hillside near the village of Phop, Arunachal Pradesh, India (Photo: Cheena Kapoor)

As well as pledging cooperation on critical minerals exploration, the declaration envisions the exchange of know-how to add value through processing and recycling, facilitating investment and building the supply chain resilience of both countries. That could include identifying joint research projects and facilitating cooperation between industry players.

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“India and Germany will work together to mutually strengthen supply chains in the field of critical minerals,” a spokesperson for the German government’s energy strategy said. “We will encourage companies to build strong ties in terms of knowledge sharing, offtake agreements and investments.”

Germany is already supporting several domestic projects focused on converting graphite into battery anode material – valuable experience that could potentially be shared with India, said Rakheja. In return for shared technical expertise, India offers a strong pool of workforce talent and a big market.

“This way, both partners can look beyond China,” she said.

India sets achievable green electricity and emissions intensity targets

The MoU, which is non-binding, is “a good start”, said Svenja Schöneich, a senior advisor at the NGO Germanwatch, adding that it was thin on details, including on how to add value to India’s critical mineral resources.

“The partnership document should figure out the problem of local value creation. It should also consider that it can’t really skip processing through China,” Schöneich said.

An official at India’s Mining Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Trade deals and tax breaks

Beyond the five-year German accord, India has implemented numerous policy measures aimed at securing its own supplies of critical minerals and adding value to its mineral exports, for example by signing favourable trade deals. Last year, India’s graphite was granted zero-duty access to the US, just as the tariffs on Chinese graphite imports climbed to a high 160%. 

When the government announced the national budget in February, it included a raft of financial measures aimed at kickstarting a plan to process minerals domestically – the details of which are expected to be announced in the coming months.

They included zero customs duty on critical mineral inputs and enhanced tax deductions for exploration, while the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme allocated the equivalent of $1.87 billion to build domestic battery cell manufacturing.

Before that can happen, progress on new mining – such as the Arunachal Pradesh graphite projects – is vital, Jain said.

“We are in 2026, and looking to move towards a cleaner world. This is the future,” he said.

The state government in Arunachal Pradesh agrees. It called last year for fast-tracked environmental permitting for graphite projects, new infrastructure around mine sites and reforms to avoid legal disputes that could hold the sector back. 

Gollo Kami, 60, a cardamom farmer and a traditional hunter has lived all his life in Phop village. He worries about the impact of mining on the local environment (Photo: Cheena Kapoor)

Back in the village of Phop, youth association secretary Doni said that while reluctant residents did not raise an objection to OIL’s preliminary exploration licence, he fears a bigger fight ahead.

Tage said up to 3,000 people could ultimately be displaced if the project proceeds, raising questions about whether economic benefits would outweigh the social and environmental costs.

“It has been difficult to make the elders agree to actual mining,” Doni said, as he and other young villagers sipped on sweet tea in a thatched mountain house. “We are trying to convince our elders that mining will not only bring resources for the nation, but bring us jobs here.”

This article was produced as part of the India-Germany Climate and Energy Journalism Programme organised by Clean Energy Wire, supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

The post India looks to untapped graphite riches for slice of critical minerals boom appeared first on Climate Home News.

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Northern British Columbia is entering a period of economic transition, with new opportunities emerging in clean energy, critical minerals, transportation, mass timber and other low-carbon industries. This report finds that while workforce development...

Europe has spent several weeks enduring blistering heat. The heatwave the continent experienced last month closed schools, disrupted power supplies, and has been linked to thousands of deaths. France, Germany, and Denmark all saw their highest temperature ever, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Now, new data shows that western Europe set another record: its hottest June ever. 

The readings, from the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program, showed that western Europe averaged 20.74 degrees Celsius, or a little over 69 degrees Fahrenheit, across the entire month — night and day. That squeaks past the previous mark set during June of 2025, and is more than 3 degrees Celsius above the average for the month. Ocean temperatures were also the hottest ever recorded. Globally, June was only .01 degrees Celsius off the all-time high.

“These records reflect a climate system continuing to accumulate heat,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. “The result is increasingly intense heatwaves, a persistently warm ocean, and growing risks for people, ecosystems, and infrastructure across Europe and beyond.”

Read Next Across Europe, heat adaptation plans are being put to a brutal test Naveena Sadasivam

The late-June heatwave followed a similar spike in May, and preceded still more high temperatures in July. These extreme conditions would have been virtually impossible 50 years ago, the World Weather Attribution initiative noted last month. Climate change, it said, is driving a new, dangerous norm that’s wreaking havoc on European systems that weren’t built for these risks. 

“Many people still live, work, and study in places that are not designed for the temperatures we are now experiencing,” Carolina Pereira Marghidan, with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said in a statement. “We need greater investment in heat-resilient homes, cities, and infrastructure to keep people safe.” 

Recent extremes are reminiscent of Europe’s sweltering summer of 2003. Since then, World Weather Attribution scientists say climate change has made daytime heat of the kind Europe is experiencing 10 times more likely and overnight extremes 100 times more likely. Going into the morning of June 28, a weather station in East Saxony, Germany, recorded a minimum temperature of 29.4 degrees Celsius, or nearly 85 Fahrenheit. The country’s meteorological agency, Deutscher Wetterdienst, called the reading historic.

Experts say elevated overnight minimums are especially concerning for human health. “When we have these high nighttime temperatures, the body isn’t able to recover sufficiently,” said Kurt Shickman, who works on heat issues at the World Resources Institute. “They’re going into the next hot day with a couple strikes against you from a health perspective.” 

The heat is also further fueling wildfire risks in parts of Europe that are already dry. Fires in Spain and southern France have caused thousands to flee, thwarted Tour de France spectators, and killed at least one firefighter. Such conditions are expected to continue, as is the general trend toward a warmer planet. 

Extreme weather can sometimes prompt policymakers to take action. After the 2003 heatwaves, European governments developed early warning systems and other adaptation measures that research shows would have reduced deaths by as much as 75 percent. Shickman also points to apps like Extrema, which help people map the thermally safest route when they’re traveling. But he says there’s a lot more that could still be done — from increasing access to affordable air conditioning to installing more resilient infrastructure, such as reflective roofs and cooler walls — in the face of a warming future. 

Extreme heat is “something that we’re seeing more and more of,” said Shickman. But he’s also optimistic that events like this can also be a catalyst for change. “These types of iconic moments can be galvanizing for years and years to come.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Western Europe just set the record for its hottest June ever on Jul 8, 2026.

Hiking through mud, thick and slippery, puts a damper on anyone’s enthusiasm. Such was the case for my intern and me on a humid summer morning, making our way to our first Western...

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief

Clean power added more to global energy supplies than any other source in 2025, according to the latest Energy Institute statistical review of world energy.

Outside the Covid pandemic, it was also the first year ever in which wind and solar, when combined, contributed more new energy than any of the individual fossil fuels.

The findings illustrate the “growing prominence” of electricity in the global energy system, according to the Energy Institute, a professional membership body that took over the production of the annual statistical review from oil firm BP in 2023.

It notes that electricity demand is rising much faster, at 3% in 2025, than energy use overall at 1.7% – and that all of the new power supply came from low-carbon sources.

While it includes data on data-centre demand for the first time, the review shows that these only make up 2% of all electricity use and 15% of the increase in 2025.

(The review does not explore other sources of demand, but separate data shows electrification of industry, heat and transport is a far larger driver of growth than data centres.)

At the same time, every source of energy – including coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydro – also reached global all-time highs in 2025, the statistical review shows.

While the 86% of “primary energy” that came from fossil fuels is a record low, their real contribution to the economy is far lower, because roughly two-thirds of their energy is lost during combustion.

Below, Carbon Brief highlights the key findings of the review in six charts.

• Global energy supplies increase 1.7% in 2025
• Fossil fuels met a record-low 86.2% of global energy supply
• The ‘primary energy fallacy’ ‘inflates fossil fuels’
• Wind and solar were biggest source of new energy in 2025
• Clean energy met all of global electricity growth in 2025
• China generates more power than the US, EU and India combined

Global energy supplies increase 1.7% in 2025

The review shows that global energy supply reached a record high in 2025, climbing 10 exajoules (EJ, 1.7%) to more than 600EJ for the first time ever.

Within this total, there were new all-time highs for every energy source: oil; coal; gas; nuclear; wind and solar; as well as hydro and other renewables. This is shown in the figure below.

Total global energy supply by fuel, exajoules. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

Notably, coal hit a new record of 166EJ in 2025, up 0.7% from a year earlier and 2.8% above the level reached in 2014, which had been seen as a potential peak for the fuel.

Wind and solar saw the fastest growth, up by 18.3% year-on-year, as well as adding more to global supplies – in combination – than any single fuel source.

Fossil fuels met a record-low 86.2% of global energy supply

Nevertheless, on the basis of these primary energy figures, the contribution of low-carbon sources to the global energy system still looks relatively small.

The latest data shows that fossil fuels made up 86.2% of global primary energy supplies, as shown in the figure below.

Share of total global energy supply from fossil fuels and clean-energy sources, including nuclear and renewables, %. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

The rise of nuclear power had pushed the fossil-fuel share of global energy down to 91% as long ago as 1986, before the Chernobyl disaster pulled the plug on further growth.

It is only in the past decade that clean-energy sources have started to gain more ground, as a result of the rapid expansion of wind and solar.

The ‘primary energy fallacy’ ‘inflates fossil fuels’

Crucially, however, the statistical review is based on “total energy supply” (TES), a measure of primary energy. This counts the energy stored in coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel going into the energy system, whereas for renewables it measures the amount of electricity coming out.

Yet, most of the energy in fossil fuels is lost as waste heat during combustion.

In fact, some two-thirds of all primary energy is lost before it can be turned into useful energy that moves a car, warms a home or keeps the lights on.

This gives rise to the “primary energy fallacy”, which tends to “inflate…the perceived contribution of fossil fuels” and the difficulty of replacing them with low-carbon energy sources.

For example, the figure in the post shows that 105 units of energy went into the global transport sector – almost all of it oil – but this only generated 20 units of transport “energy services”.

In other words, less than 20% of the primary energy being used for transport actually ends up moving people or goods, while the remaining 80% was lost as waste heat.

Until 2024, the statistical review sought to address this issue by using the “substitution method” for clean-energy sources. This listed the primary energy supplied by wind and solar, for example, as the amount of fossil fuels that would have been needed to generate the same amount of electricity.

It stopped using this approach in 2025, explaining that this would reveal the higher efficiency of a clean-energy system that loses less energy during fossil-fuel combustion. It explained:

“Put simply, in future we will need to supply less energy in the form of clean electricity to undertake the same amount of work as the equivalent energy supplies from fossil fuels. Primary energy demand will decrease as the energy system increasingly electrifies and renewable electricity continues to increase its share of generation..”

Wind and solar were biggest source of new energy in 2025

With this in mind, it is all the more notable that wind and solar, in combination, were the world’s biggest source of new energy in 2025, as shown in the figure below.

Again, perhaps two-thirds of the new primary energy added by fossil fuels last year will never actually contribute useful work to the economy, because it will be lost as waste heat.

In contrast, the new energy added by wind and solar is in the form of electricity and almost all of it can be used directly to power factories, homes, appliances and electric vehicles.

Contribution to the change in total global energy supply by fuel, %. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

Moreover, wind and solar saw the fastest growth by far, up 18% in 2025 alone. Over the past decade, they expanded fivefold, while coal, oil and gas grew by 6%, 9% and 21%, respectively. 

Clean energy met all of global electricity growth in 2025

The impact of renewables is clearest in the power sector, where combined with a new record for nuclear power, they met all of the growth in global electricity demand in 2025.

This is shown in the figure below, which illustrates how fossil generation was flat last year and how wind and solar now generate more electricity than hydro or nuclear power.

Global electricity generation by fuel, terawatt hours. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

The review says that wind and solar power, when combined, grew by 18% in 2025, whereas there was a small decline in coal generation balanced by a small rise for gas.

Overall, it says that global electricity generation increased by some 940 terawatt hours (TWh, 3%), roughly three times the annual demand of the UK.

Separate figures, included in the review for the first time, show that data centres used 788TWh of electricity in 2025, up 130TWh on a year earlier.

This means that data centres accounted for 2% of global electricity demand. 

China generates more power than the US, EU and India combined

The Energy Institute report says that the power sector is set to play an increasingly important role, because it is growing more quickly than other parts of the global energy system.

There is also increasing political attention on the idea of using expanded clean-power supplies to rapidly electrify other parts of the economy, particularly heat and transport.

The COP31 presidency has called for countries to back a global goal for 35% of “final” energy to come from electricity by 2035, against a global average today of around 22%.

China is well ahead of the global average, with electricity making up 30% of its final energy supplies in 2025. It recently adopted a 35% by 2030 target for electrification.

One reason it has been able to do this is the huge scale of its electricity system. Indeed, China now generates more electricity than the US, EU and India combined, as shown in the figure below.

Electricity generation by country, terawatt hours. Source: Energy Institute (2026).

While much of the rise in China’s electricity has historically come from coal-fired generation, there was enough growth of clean-power sources to push coal down last year.

‘City slicker’ payments swell to $2.6B with Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill and farm bailouts Anthony Lacey July 8, 2026

More than 92,000 “city slickers” living in some of the biggest metropolitan areas in the U.S. took in over $2.6 billion in farm subsidies between 2020 and 2025, even though many of these people don’t live or work on farms, a new EWG analysis finds.

The soaring payouts went to 13,000 more city slickers compared to last year’s analysis, that looked at payments through 2024, EWG found. At the same time, farm bankruptcies have recently reached new heights.

EWG analyzed Department of Agriculture data and found that between 2020 and 2025, $2.6 billion in farm subsidies went to 92,766 residents of Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and 197 other major metro areas – with many never setting foot on farmland.

These payments averaged more than $28,000 per person between 2020 and 2025, or just over $4,700 each per year, EWG’s analysis found.

Even more taxpayer funds are going to city recipients this year after Republicans in Congress pushed through President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law enlarged loopholes that make it easier to qualify for the payouts and get more money.

It hiked payment limits from $125,000 to $155,000 per person, letting every member of some farms collect up to $155,000 a year each, even if they don’t live or work on a farm, as long as it is organized as a pass-through entity, such as a joint venture, S corporation or limited liability corporation.

EWG compiled a list of the 200 biggest metro areas, along with the number of urban recipients and the total farm subsidies they received between 2020 and 2025, including many new recipients in those areas possibly benefiting from the expanded loopholes:

200 largest metro areas with city slicker subsidy recipients

Image Record subsidy amounts

The U.S. is reaching record levels of agricultural industry bailouts, exceeding $25 billion since early 2025, with even more taxpayer-funded handouts still being requested. And these latest bailouts follow payouts from multiple disaster programs in the first and second Trump administrations.

The subsidy increases were paid for with cuts to Medicaid totaling nearly $1 trillion and $187 billion in cuts to hunger assistance programs. These reductions have led to hospital closings and the loss of hunger assistance for over 4 million Americans, including more than 800,000 children. 

As more and more funding is made available for farm subsidies, many recipients benefit from rules that allow people not involved in day-to-day life on the farm to collect payments.

Farm subsidy recipients must be “actively engaged” in farming. 

But it’s very easy to qualify as “actively engaged,” even for someone who never lives or works on a farm. The farm bill’s loopholes allow urban residents to get farm subsidies, even if they do not live or work on a farm. The Government Accountability Office in 2018 found that roughly one-fourth of farm subsidy recipients do not contribute any personal labor to farms.

Another GAO report, issued last month, examined improper payments made to the agriculture industry. It found that a tariff relief program from Trump’s first term had an improper payment rate of 19.3%. A USDA disaster program made improper payments at a rate of 45.2%.

The White House recently requested $11 billion to once again bail out the agricultural industry over the rising costs of fertilizer and fuel from Trump’s war with Iran. This would drive up total farm safety net spending to over $55 billion in 2026 alone.

The proposed “Farm Bill 2.0” making its way through the Senate this month will do nothing to fix these problems. Instead it will maintain the status quo and send billions of dollars in subsidies to city slickers who have nothing to do with farming.

Locating city slickers

For the analysis, EWG identified city slickers living in ZIP codes in the 200 most populous metro areas. Using existing datasets, EWG identified city slicker subsidy recipients as those living in areas with a population density greater than 3,000 people per square mile within census-designated metro areas. 

To rule out non-urban areas, the methodology looked at places the USDA doesn’t consider rural as well as ZIP codes that are outside a distance to a city center dictated by the city’s population size. The methodology also looked at other metrics to determine an area's rural status.

This analysis updates and builds on previous EWG estimates of city slickers, which included only recipients who lived within city limits. The updated methodology seeks to capture urban sprawl, which has changed how certain areas are defined, and to foster a better understanding of how many subsidy recipients live in urban areas.

Areas of Focus Farm Subsidies Over 13,000 more urban-area residents took in farm subsidies in 2025 than in 2024 Authors Jared Hayes July 9, 2026

View the full size guide with clickable links here.

Welcome!

The guide has been compiled with the intention of increasing public access to services that are free or low-cost in the New Orleans area. Most listings are for services located in Orleans & Jefferson parishes, although select state and nationwide services have also been included.

Listed resources were contacted by phone and asked to verify the information listed. Organizations were specifically and intentionally asked about funding options for uninsured patients, the availability of Spanish translation services, and their ability to provide services for transgender and non-binary patients. Available transgender and non-binary services have been incorporated throughout and can also be found in a dedicated section of this guide.

This guide is a 2026 update based on information compiled by staff and volunteers for the REACH NOLA/Common Ground Health Clinic Community Resource Guide from 2006-14, and working directly from the 2025 edition, which sourced information compiled by volunteers at the Center for Ethical Living & Social Justice Renewal, as well as the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming NOLA Resource Guide produced by Dr. Jennifer Glick and Dr. Robin Ivester.

In response to the world around us this year, we have added a new immigration section and have expanded the food and mental health sections.

This edition has been produced in partnership with Imagine Water Works as a public service by volunteer community members and is available free of charge to all people.

Download a free copy for printing here. This version saves paper and can be folded into a booklet. We encourage people and organizations to print your own copies as needed. Copies should remain unedited. Please do not add logos or remove the front page, credit pages, resource pages, or ISBN#.

If you are an organization and would like to partner with us to print copies of your own with your logo and can share or cover printing costs, email klie@imaginewaterworks.org. We are happy to work with your team to make this information available to all.

HELP US PRINT COPIES: DONATE TO THE NOCRG Acknowledgements:

Many people did the work of making this edition of the resource guide possible!

Thanks to the entire Imagine Water Works team for partnering on this project and hosting our volunteers so hospitably, to Antigravity and Imagine Water Works for digital distro, and to many New Orleanians committed to community care and harm reduction, including but not limited to: Klie Kliebert, Carly Ry, Sana Fujimora, Ben Collongues, Virginia Gregory, Elizabeth Gelvin, Sarah Watson, Angelique Thomas, everyone who came out to our volunteer call-a-thons, and even more lovely folks who wish to remain anonymous, and probably you.

Finally, love and appreciation to Harriet Burbeck for the cover art. Beauty matters!

Contact us with questions, additions, requests, and offers to volunteer or collaborate:
Coleen Murphy, coordinating organizer, at NOLAresourceguide@gmail.com

The post New Orleans Community Resource Guide 2026 appeared first on Imagine Water Works.

The debate over building energy codes, and energy efficiency in general, often centers on upfront cost. But energy efficiency more than makes up for that incremental cost with longer-term savings that add up over time, like the power of compounded interest.

A recent Department of Energy (DOE) release estimates that adopting the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) would increase residential construction costs by $9.2 billion annually, or up to $14,000 per home. Rather than focusing on the headline figure alone, it is useful to examine the estimate in the context of overall home costs and long-term homeowner economics.

Put the cost in context

Since the IECC is an energy code for residential buildings, let’s focus on single-family homes. Adding multifamily homes would only strengthen the following cost argument.

The U.S. builds roughly one million new single-family homes each year. Spread across those homes, DOE’s $9.2 billion figure implies about $9,200 per home.

Now compare that to actual home costs. Using data from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB):

• Average construction cost: $428,000
• Total price including land and soft costs: $665,000

That means that the  $9.2 billion headline represents:

• 2.15% increase relative to construction cost
• 1.38% increase relative to full home price

In other words, even under DOE’s assumptions, energy codes raise total home costs by around one to two percent. That is small relative to normal year-to-year swings in material costs, interest rates, or land prices.

It is also far below the $31,000 figure often cited in industry testimony.

What do homeowners get in return?

The key question is not cost alone. It is cost versus savings.

DOE’s analytical framework recognizes this. It evaluates:

• upfront incremental cost
• annual energy savings
• payback period
• life-cycle cost over a 30-year mortgage
• annual cash flow to the homeowner

This matters because homeowners do not experience costs in isolation. They generally experience monthly cash flow. Lower energy consumption can also improve long-term affordability by reducing exposure to future energy price volatility while supporting a more efficient and reliable energy system.

Independent analysis from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) shows that the 2024 IECC:

• reduces household energy costs by 6.8% on average
• produces positive cash flow in year one
• yields about $144 in net savings in the first year

Even if the upfront cost were $9,200, the structure of mortgage financing means:

• the incremental monthly mortgage cost is modest
• energy savings offset that cost immediately
• households come out ahead from the start

Looking Beyond Simple Payback DOE’s press release emphasizes long “payback periods,” suggesting some exceed 10 years. But simple payback may not be the strongest for housing decisions:

1. Because Most Homes are financed. Buyers do not pay $9,200 upfront in cash. They typically finance it over 30 years.
2. Cash flow matters more than payback. DOE’s methodology highlights “years to positive cash flow” as a key metric. = On that basis, IECC performs well.
3. Homes last decades. Efficiency improvements in the building envelope deliver savings over the life of the home, not just a short payback window.

Discussions about housing affordability often focus on reducing upfront construction costs. When asking how we can improve affordability for homeowners, an equally important consideration is the long-term cost of owning and operating a home. Building energy efficiency can help lower energy bills over decades, making it an important part of the affordability conversation.

As policymakers, builders, and consumers evaluate future building energy codes, the discussion should consider both upfront costs and long-term value. Looking at both sides of the equation provides a more complete picture of how energy efficiency can support housing affordability over the life of a home.

As energy demand continues to grow from new housing, transportation, manufacturing, and data centers, improving building efficiency can help reduce unnecessary energy demand while supporting affordability and system reliability. Using energy more efficiently remains one of the lowest-cost strategies for reducing waste and managing long-term energy costs.