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Food to Power is working to expand food access, food and education, and food production to create a more equitable food and agriculture system in the greater Colorado Springs region.

What started as a food recovery organization in 2013 has evolved into much more. The nonprofit operates a no-cost grocery program, runs a quarter-acre farm to grow produce that they sell at a local farmers market, and organizes a youth internship program. They also engage in policy advocacy to advance legislation that builds healthier and more equitable food and agriculture systems and they collect food scraps to turn into compost. 

The goal is to create a healthier food ecosystem, Patience Kabwasa, the organization’s Executive Director explains. “We’re really taking food and transforming it, regenerating it into power through everything that we do.”  

A key part of this work is reclaiming land stewardship practices. Their Hillside Hub sits in a historically Black neighborhood in the southeastern part of Colorado Springs, where residents may have become disconnected from agricultural roots. 

“Being able to have a space where you’re able to learn and produce in a way that benefits yourself and your community is really important to us as an organization,” Kabwasa tells Food Tank. 

Food to Power, like many nonprofits in the United States, have experienced challenges in the face of recent funding cuts and canceled grants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had awarded them a US$350,000 regional environmental justice grant—but last year they learned the funds were no longer available. 

“We had to absorb that, which was a huge blow,” Kabwasa says. “So we really had to think about what our core programs and how we get food to people.” 

The news also pushed Food to Power to think differently about expansion strategies and diversifying their budget to become less grant-dependent. “We need to be able to navigate this time for the foreseeable future,” Kabwasa says. 

New partnerships offer one way forward as they scale their composting work, a source of income for the organization. And even with limited resources, Food to Power’s program reached 44,000 households last year—a 34 percent increase from the year before. 

“We’re moving through and we are being generative in this time of difficulty,” Kabwasa tells Food Tank, “and really taking it as an opportunity to just root down even deeper and build across the region.” 

Listen to or watch the full conversation with Patience Kabwasa on Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg to hear more about how Food to Power is co-creating solutions with their neighbors, Kabwasa’s journey into food justice work, and the policy wins that the organization helped make happen. 

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

Photo courtesy of Food to Power

The post In Colorado Springs, Food to Power Builds Resilience from the Ground Up appeared first on Food Tank.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s ties to the Yellowstone Club stretch back nearly two decades, Center for Western Priorities Communications Director Kate Groetzinger writes in a new Westwise post, and raise questions about whether he represents the best interests of the public.

The Yellowstone Club, which sits on land that was once public, and its owners are notorious in Montana for locking up public lands through land swaps with the federal government. The club’s member list includes celebrities and tech titans, like Justin Timberlake and Bill Gates. Financial disclosure and property records show that Burgum owns a condominium inside the club valued at $22 million as well as an ownership stake in the club, generating annual income from both.

Burgum’s financial stake in a resort with a long history of disputes over public-land access, land swaps, and development raises serious ethical concerns. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter said Burgum should not be involved in decisions affecting residential development on public lands while retaining an ownership stake in the Yellowstone Club.

And while Burgum’s office says he has complied with federal ethics requirements, legal compliance is beside the point: the man charged with stewarding America’s public lands should not have significant financial interests tied to a luxury resort that has repeatedly benefited from locking the public out of public lands.

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Quote of the day

Every public acre locked away from public access is an acre lost to the next generation of Montana hunters and anglers… So we’re asking the court to provide what FWP would not: clarity, accountability, and a path back to the public land that belongs to everyone. Now—and for all who come after us.”

—Montana Backcountry Hunters & Anglers and Public Land/Water Access Association, Billings Gazette

Picture This

@Interior

The NBA Finals have Wemby.

America’s public lands have these giants.

Feature image: A condo at the Yellowstone Club that was listed for sale for $22 million in 2020. Source: Mountain Living

The post The Secretary of the Interior has a Yellowstone Club problem appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

DENVER—U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz appeared in front of a House Natural Resources subcommittee Thursday to defend the Trump administration’s downsizing of his agency and answer questions about the upcoming wildfire season.

Schultz defended the Trump administration’s unpopular staffing cuts to the Forest Service, which have resulted in a massive gap in wildfire prevention work heading into the summer wildfire season, as well as the administration’s move to shutter research stations across the U.S.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the Forest Service has lost around 16 percent of its staff—a total loss of 5,860 employees—including “red card” holders who are authorized to assist in wildfire efforts. Meanwhile, according to a Center for Western Priorities analysis of publicly available data, the Forest Service treated roughly 35 percent fewer acres of forest for wildfire in 2025 compared to 2024.

Schultz also defended the administration’s efforts to aggressively ramp up logging in national forests and repeal the Roadless Rule, which currently protects 45 million acres of national forest land from clear-cutting, road-building, mining, and oil and gas drilling.

Research has found that high-severity wildfires are almost two times more likely to occur on private industrial forest lands than on adjacent public lands. Meanwhile, the Roadless Rule does not preclude fuels reduction work. Since the Roadless Rule took effect in 2001, nearly 2 million acres of inventoried roadless areas across 12 western states have been treated for hazardous fuels.

Schultz also defended the administration’s aggressive strategy of putting all wildfires out as soon as possible after they begin, constraining fire managers from making the call based on available resources and expertise. This approach, known as full or total suppression, has been shown by science to increase long-term wildfire risk.

Finally, the Trump administration is currently proposing a cut of 75 percent to the overall Forest Service budget, including the complete elimination of the agency’s research program.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Deputy Director Lauren Bogard:

“The Trump administration continues to treat our national forests like assets on a balance sheet, prioritizing timber industry profits over responsible, science-backed management.

“In today’s hearing, members of Congress and Chief Schultz seemed convinced that we can log our way out of wildfires by ramping up commercial logging, which actually increases wildfire risk, according to science.

“Meanwhile, the Trump administration has fallen way behind on the targeted fuel reduction treatments that actually reduce wildfire risk, leaving communities across the country more exposed to the risk of catastrophic wildfire.”

Learn more:

• Falling behind: Forest Service fuel treatment gap puts communities at risk – Center for Western Priorities
• As admin claws at national forests, what will become of the Forest Service? – Wilderness Society

The post STATEMENT on Forest Service hearing in House Natural Resources subcommittee today appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Holy Cross Energy CEO Bryan Hannegan said the utility plans to expand its programs for smart electrification and demand flexibility, and selectively add new flexible renewable resources.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 4, 2026

Statement on ACT NOW Clean Tech Initiative

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — On June 4, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato signed the Advancing Clean Technology for Neighborhood and Next-Generation Opportunity and Workforce (ACT NOW) Executive Order. In response, Ohio River Valley Institute Industrial Decarbonization Program Manager Justine Hackimer issued the following statement:

Clean technology and advanced manufacturing present a generational opportunity to strengthen Allegheny County’s economy, create high-quality jobs, and build on our region’s long history of industrial innovation. 

For generations, southwestern Pennsylvania’s workers, manufacturers, and research institutions helped power economic growth across the country. As global markets increasingly demand cleaner technologies, our region is well-positioned to compete for the industries that will shape the next generation of manufacturing. 

But realizing that opportunity requires more than individual projects. It takes coordination and smart policy like ACT NOW to ensure workers and local communities directly benefit from investments. We applaud County Executive Sara Innamorato’s leadership in shaping a clean tech future that works for all Pennsylvanians.

By investing in the industries of tomorrow while strengthening the systems that support workers and communities, the region can build a more diverse, resilient economy that creates opportunities for generations to come.

###

 

The post Statement on ACT NOW Clean Tech Initiative appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

By: Green Knowledge Foundation

Nigeria’s growing waste crisis is no longer just an environmental concern; it is also a major socio-economic and public health challenge. From the bustling Alaba International Market in Lagos and Igbudu Market in Warri to places such as Ojota, Ajah, Epe, Akpakpava, and Gwagwalada, heaps of unmanaged waste continue to accumulate in open spaces, drainage channels, markets, and dumpsites. 

The majority of this waste is biodegradable and decomposes, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. Beyond its environmental consequences, poor management of organic waste contributes to many challenges like disease outbreaks from poor sanitation, flooding, reduced productivity, e.g. Waste workers falling sick, leachate that affects ground water and also farm products etc and lost economic opportunities that arise from zero waste approaches to waste management. Yet, hidden within these waste streams is a valuable resource capable of creating jobs, improving soil health, supporting local agriculture, and driving a more circular and sustainable economy.

Organic waste, which includes food waste, agricultural residues, slaughterhouse waste, and other biodegradable materials, makes up a significant percentage of Nigeria’s municipal solid waste stream. When improperly managed, this waste decomposes anaerobically, emitting methane into the atmosphere and contributing significantly to climate change. 

Yet, beyond the climate implications of organic waste, there is a deeper human story, stories of poverty, health challenges, negative stigma, inequality, weak infrastructure, and other socio-vulnerabilities.

Many Nigerian communities are heavily dependent on informal waste workers. Waste pickers play a crucial role in recovering recyclable materials and diverting waste from dumpsites, often under dangerous and unregulated conditions. Their contribution to reducing landfill pressure and methane emissions is significant, yet they remain largely invisible in policy discussions. 

A visit to the Olusosun Landfill in Lagos or the Gosa Dumpsite will reveal the critical work these informal waste pickers do. At the Gosa dumpsite, once the disposal trucks finish dumping waste, waste pickers begin sorting and collecting, and, in no time, the waste is reduced to items with little or no value. For many, this might be seen as undignified work, without the social protections needed, but for the waste pickers working here, it means feeding their families.

According to the World Bank, poorly managed waste disproportionately affects vulnerable and low-income communities, contributing to flooding, disease transmission, respiratory problems from waste burning, and adverse economic impacts.

Sadly, many Nigerian communities have a bad habit of burning waste, and where organic waste is openly burned or dumped, methane emissions are often accompanied by toxic smoke and foul odours that threaten both environmental and human health.

The social stigma, and the economic burden carried by informal waste workers, is particularly alarming. Many have suffered injuries from landfill fires, exposure to hazardous waste, and long-term health complications due to unsafe working conditions. Informal waste workers face forced evictions from informal settlements near dumpsites (e.g. Karu axis in Abuja), without access to social protection or alternative livelihoods. Despite contributing to recycling and climate mitigation efforts, they are often excluded from government planning and investment opportunities.

Environmental activist Wangari Maathai once stated, “The environment and the economy are really two sides of the same coin.” This reality is evident in Nigeria, where environmental degradation from poor waste management directly impacts livelihoods, healthcare costs, food systems, and community wellbeing.

Methane reduction presents not only an environmental opportunity but also an economic one. Investments in composting, source segregation, Black Soldier Fly (BSF) Farming and other specialised organic waste management systems can create jobs, strengthen local economies, and improve public health outcomes. Speaking on climate action, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, emphasised that “Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years.” For Nigeria, this means that addressing organic waste management must become a national priority within both climate and development policies.

Civil society organisations like GAIA, GKF and a host of other GAIA members across Nigeria are increasingly advocating for zero-waste systems, an all-inclusive system for waste management. 

Solving Nigeria’s methane challenge requires more than technical solutions. It demands a socio-economic approach that recognises the dignity of waste workers, invests in green infrastructure such as MRFs, and empowers communities of farmers, waste pickers, and other critical stakeholders.

This is why the MAMRN project is unique, it recognises that organic waste should no longer be treated with kid’s gloves.

This article is the third in a series on the Methane Reduction in Nigeria (MAMRN) Project, implemented in collaboration with CfEW Jos, SraDev Lagos, Pave Lagos, CODAF Epe Lagos, and SEDI Benin City.

The post Social-Economic Perspectives on Organic Waste and Methane Emissions in Nigeria first appeared on GAIA.

“In Las Vegas, one of the fastest warming cities in the country, you cannot live without electricity,” said protest organizer Leslie Vega, who said she’s lost loved ones to heatstroke.

Sometimes, you have to take the long view, so this week, we’re joined by Ryan Avent, author of, “In Good Faith: How the Nature of Belief Shapes the Fate of Societies” to discuss The Big Issues: human evolution, the impact of collective knowledge and culture, and the need to create a new story about the future of society. It gets deeper than that: We also discuss grass-is-greener thinking on infrastructure, the nature of belief without the need for evidence, and the fact that there is no perfect past.

This is a “Talking Headways” for the Ages, so let’s review all the ways you can enjoy this spirited content:

• Click here for a full transcript, albeit with some AI typos.
• Click the player below to listen.
• Or check out the lightly edited excerpt below the player.

Jeff Wood: Usually when I’m thinking about cities and reading a book like “The City History” by Lewis Mumford or whatever it might be, it’s always usually going back 5,000 years. It’s not going back 100,000 years, which I got from reading your book.

That was a really important part of it, because this slow process is building upon itself and all of the cell creation and whatever was happening to apes led to civilization as it is now. And that process was really interesting because usually we think about civilization as like a point that we started building cities, and then we went from there. But actually it goes back even further to this idea of care and caring.

Ryan Avent: As humans, as historians, people love to chop things up into eras and say, “Oh, this sort of revolution unfolded here, and thereafter we were completely different.”

And we do this all the time. We do it with agriculture and the first cities and states and with the Industrial Revolution. And I think it’s important to realize a couple things. One, that these big moments come together slowly out of a lot of accumulating changes in the past, and we can only understand them in that way, right?

As much as it might seem like there are specific individuals or societies or civilizations that figure something out that no one ever figured out before, change is generally evolutionary. But the other side of that is the question of whether there is this process of cultural adaptation that’s going on throughout our whole history, right?

And we have to learn to develop the ideas and the stories that allow us to kind of exploit particular niches, right? So agriculture, when we first became dependent on it, was awful. It was way worse than hunting and gathering. People did back-breaking labor all the time and were, were malnourished and, and it sucked.

And for this to be sustainable, there had to be the emergence of ideas and ways of understanding our place in the world that made sense to people, and that somehow made it OK for them to keep doing this really arduous work. And I think the same thing is true of early settlements. Like, we weren’t born ready to inhabit an urban environment as a species.

We had to come up with the modes of thinking that allowed that to work. And so you have this process of trial and error where early settlements don’t last very long. They kind of flash in and out of existence. And it’s only over time that we come to figure out how to be urban by coming up with the ideas and the sort of cultural touchstones that allow us to adapt to that existence.

And the book sort of follows this line of thought throughout our history. And that’s kind of how we should think about how we got to modern economic growth. And I think if we want to enjoy future prosperity that’s greater than what we enjoy now, we might have to do some similar sort of adapting in terms of our ideas about what we’re doing here.

Jeff Wood: The cultural explosion was interesting as well, and you mentioned the DNA aspect of it, where you’re passing along information through DNA. But then you have this cultural kind of aspect of it, where apes can teach each other how to use a stick to get ants, those types of things. And then you share it, and then you learn it together, and then it gets shared throughout culture, and then you specialize, and then you move forward with that.

I’m wondering if you could kind of explain that a little bit in more detail. It’s really important, especially until we get to the point where Christianity and religion kind of creates this larger cultural experience throughout Europe and the Mediterranean.

Ryan Avent: This is really the heart of the book. I think when we kind of think about humans and what makes them special, we tend to focus on the fact that we’re these big-brained creatures who can reason and use logic to solve difficult problems. We can do calculus!

But I think, actually, if you look back at our history, the thing that’s really allowed us to become such technologically capable animals is this capacity to support culture. We’ve got a genetic inheritance — a lot of information that’s useful to us that gets passed to us through our genes, and that’s driven our long-run biological evolution.

But the thing that really sort of marked us off as different as we split off from our ape ancestors was this emerging capacity to use a collective knowledge and collective information processing in the form of culture. And culture, in a nutshell, is a body of information that is passed down over time socially rather than genetically, and sort of lives in the heads of all the people who are helping this process along.

And it includes instructions for all sorts of things. You know, I think when humans occupy an ecosystem, the thing that allows us to adapt and really exploit that ecosystem effectively is not, as with many animals, these biological tricks. It’s these cultural tricks that allow us to figure out when to hunt and gather and what things to take out of the ecosystem and how to prepare them and how to survive the hardships associated with that ecosystem.

But cultural knowledge also includes other things beyond sort of these kind of, you know, practical moment-to-moment things. And it’s what’s really allowed us to scale up and become the amazing creatures that we are, is the way that our social technologies evolve over time. And we’ve found ways to operate, to cooperate, I guess, in larger numbers to better purposes.

We’ve found ways to generate and preserve knowledge at enormous scale, and I think that’s kind of the fascinating part of our history, and it’s not something that individuals authored sort of using their own brains is something that kind of we stumbled on and that’s led us here, and, and now we’ve sort of forgotten that that was kind of our special trick, even though it’s still holding our societies together today.

DrillOrDrop’s round-up of announcements from three companies with UK onshore oil and gas interests: investor raises stake, director resigns and refinancing continues.

West Newton oil and gas field.
Photo: West Newton and Sproatley Gateway to the Gasfields Reabold Resources – Crypto Cousins raises stake

Reabold Resources, the majority owner of the West Newton oil and gas field in East Yorkshire, announced this morning that a US investment company had increased its interest.

Rohan Oza, through Crypto Cousins, LLC, raised his investment in Reabold from 5.6% to 14.309% of voting rights.

A statement from Reabold said the share-owning threshold was crossed on 8 May 2026 and completed today (4 June 2026).

In March 2026, the company announced that Rohan Oza’s investment group had committed to buy 1,900 million ordinary shares.

Reabold said the funds raised from that share placing would be “used primarily to progress” the West Newton project. The operator, Rathlin Energy, has planning permission for lower-volume fracking on the West Newton A-2 well.

Reabold revealed last year that the West Newton sites, currently mothballed, could be used for bitcoin mining. It unveiled plans to use gas from the wells to generate electricity.

Reabold has also announced (3 June 2026) that it had granted exclusive rights to Zenith Energy plc to evaluate the potential acquisition of Reabold shares in Daybreak Oil and Gas.

Union Jack – director resignation

Union Jack Oil, another investor in West Newton, has announced the resignation of Graham Bull, a non-executive director.

A statement yesterday (3 June 2026) said:

“Mr Bull cited the detrimental effect attacks on the Board from certain media organisations has had on him and his family in his decision to resign.”

The statement did not name any media organisations.

Angus Energy – financial restructuring

Angus Energy, which operates the UK’s largest onshore gas site at Saltfleetby in Lincolnshire, announced today (4 June 2026) that it continued “to make good progress” on legal documents associated with its proposed financial restructuring.

The company has been refinancing its loan with the main creditors, including Trafigura and Forum Energy Services Limited.

The company said in a statement to shareholders:

 “Although progress to final binding agreements has been slower than anticipated, the Company is confident that the restructuring process will conclude in the coming weeks.”

“Upon execution, the proposed restructuring is expected to materially strengthen the Group’s balance sheet, enhance liquidity, and establish a more sustainable long-term capital structure.”

Share trading in Angus has been suspended since 19 May 2026. The company said trading would resume when the restructuring had been completed.

Angus also operates the Balcombe oil site in West Sussex. Planning permission for a well test at the site lapsed in February 2026. The company said it would reapply but no application has yet been published.

The report, prepared for the Natural Gas Council, applauded reforms introduced following Winter Storm Uri in 2021 but said better coordination between the gas and electric sectors is still needed.

A complaint at FERC seeking to limit competition among transmission developers would inject uncertainty into the process and spur regulatory delays, writes Will Hazelip from National Grid Ventures US.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator is expected to have growing capacity surpluses over the next five years, according to the OMS-MISO survey.

Thousands of community and social service workers in Ontario, unionized under OPSEU, are currently on strike or locked out of their workplaces as they fight...

The post Workers undeterred by growing tensions in fight for Ontario’s social service sector first appeared on Spring.

This is a guest blog by Yu Sun Chin, Senior Regional Researcher at Zero Carbon Analytics (ZCA).  ZCA is an international research group that provides insights and analysis on climate change and the energy transition.

In the Philippines, families have been seeing their power bills rise over the past few months, especially since the Iran war. 

“When we got our energy bill after the Iran war broke out, we were very shocked. It was wow. It was a significant increase,” Jaime Quemado, who had just bought rooftop solar in Manila, said in a recent AP story about the price shocks. 

The Philippines already has one of the highest power prices in Asia, second only to Singapore, which is a much wealthier country. Low-income households can spend up to 10% of their annual income on electricity, making electricity affordability a big issue.

Imported fossil fuels are pushing up electricity bills

There are many reasons why the country’s power prices are so high, including inefficient coal plants, how expensive it is to transmit power over the country’s 7,600 islands, and the fact that the government doesn’t subsidise electricity costs for consumers, unlike in other Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. 

But a big reason is that the Philippines generates just over three-quarters of its electricity from burning coal and gas in power plants, and a lot of this fuel is imported from other countries.

Importing coal and gas is expensive, and becomes even more so when conflicts like the Iran war squeeze global supply and push up prices. Currently, LNG (liquefied natural gas, a gas cooled into liquid to travel long distances) prices in Asia are more than 70% higher than on February 27, the day before the Iran war began, and coal prices in Asia have risen around 20% over the same time period. A similar thing happened in 2022, when LNG prices hit historical highs in Asia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Price of fossil fuels in Asia have increased since the war in Iran. Credit: Zero Carbon Analytics

As the fuels used for power get pricier, electricity becomes more expensive to produce, and increases in global coal, oil and gas prices are felt in consumers’ pockets – especially in countries that rely on imported fossil fuels for power. In the Philippines, households literally see an increasing “generation charge” in their monthly electricity bills, which refers to how much it costs to produce electricity. 

Poorer families will be hit hardest by rising energy prices – research shows that poorer Filipinos will lose a higher percentage of their income from energy price shocks than richer Filipinos, because, in addition to paying more for fuel and power, rising energy prices also raise food prices.

But the Philippines isn’t the only country that imports a lot of fossil fuels. Many countries across the world meet the majority of their energy needs with fossil fuel imports, including Japan, Korea, Türkiye and Germany, according to think tank Ember. 

Other countries in South and Southeast Asia, like Thailand and Pakistan, import substantial amounts of gas, which they use to generate power. Thailand relies on gas to generate about two-thirds of its electricity, and Pakistan relies on it for around one-third. As a result, power bills are also going up in many of these countries, including Türkiye and Pakistan.   

Governments in Asia are rushing to get renewables online

These high electricity bills aren’t inevitable – they are a result of power systems that are built to rely on turbulent fossil fuel markets. A system that uses renewable energy sources, like wind or solar PV, can help lower power prices. Once they are up and running, wind and solar power don’t require fuel – apart from sun and wind, which are free – so there are no fuel costs to fluctuate. Solar can produce stable power for up to 30 years.

Research has shown that it is already cheaper to produce electricity from solar than from gas in the Philippines. The same is true in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, like Vietnam and Malaysia. 

In the Philippines, the government is taking note and rushing solar power online. On March 30, the government said it had activated 250 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity – equivalent to 8% of the county’s 2024 solar capacity – and 450 megawatt-hour (MWh) of battery storage. It has also said it would fast-track the completion of 22 power projects to bring an additional 1.47 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy and storage online by the end of April. 

Many are turning to solar panels to generate electricity as they are cheaper than oil and gas. Image credit: ulleo, Pixabay

Filipino homeowners are also hurrying to install solar panels, with rooftop solar becoming increasingly popular. A survey of 20 local solar companies saw a 70% rise in weekly installations and a six-fold increase in customer inquiries since the Iran war began, according to the AP.

Thailand is also seeing a surge in inquiries about installing new solar since the start of the Iran war, according to media reports. In April, the Thai government also approved THB 5 billion (about USD 156 million) in loans for people to install rooftop solar and buy EVs.

In fact, our recent research found that 15 Asian countries have announced clean energy measures in response to the Iran war.

Many asian countries have announced clean energy measures in response to the war in Iran. Credit: Zero Carbon Analytics

More renewable energy is good for energy bills and the planet

All of this new solar is good news for consumers’ pockets. If the Philippines continues to expand solar and use it to replace imported coal and gas in the power mix, it will help to lower electricity bills. The same is true for Thailand – we calculated that Thai households with solar could have saved 77% on their power bills compared to households without solar in 2024, saving an average THB 8340 (about USD 260).

New solar is also good news for the planet. More renewable energy means fewer emissions from coal and gas plants, which will help to slow global warming and lessen the chances of climate impacts and extreme weather. This is especially important in Southeast Asia, which is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate disasters. 

The Iran war has reminded us that imported coal and gas are an expensive and risky way to generate power, just four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed the same. Choosing to replace fossil fuel generation with renewable energy will help to protect families from paying the price of such global crises.

 

The post Out of pocket: The real cost of importing fossil fuels on electricity bills appeared first on 350.

Critical policies that could unlock funding for cycling and pedestrian infrastructure across America have cleared the first hurdle in Congress — and the advocates who fought for them are launching a national nonprofit to promote a model that they hope can get the bill across the finish line and achieve similar wins.

Last month, advocates for the bipartisan Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Safety Act celebrated after legislators folded several key provisions of the bill into the House’s latest major transportation law, the BUILD America 250 Act.

That bill passed out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on May 22, and will now make its way through a months-long legislative gauntlet known as the federal “reauthorization” process. If the Langenkamp provisions survive those negotiations on Capitol Hill, though, they will explicitly encourage communities across America to spend their guaranteed Highway Safety Improvement Program dollars on filling gaps in their active transportation networks for the first time.

Even better, these provisions will allow communities to fortify their bike lanes and greenways with federal money alone. In years past, the same process required an onerous local match that many governments pointed to as an excuse to neglect people outside of cars in their HSIP plans.

“There is tremendous bipartisan support in the country for making our roadways far more pedestrian and cyclist friendly,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), who introduced the legislation, in an interview with Streetsblog. “And this is especially true at a time of soaring gasoline prices. The pressure has been on for us to make sure that our tax dollars go to help people who are using every conceivable kind of transportation — including walking and bicycling.”

Recommended New Law Would Honor Legacy of Slain Cyclist Sarah Langenkamp By Helping Cities Fill Bike Network Gaps Kea Wilson March 30, 2023

They might sound wonky, but the measures outlined in the Langenkamp Act have topped many advocates’ policy wishlists for years. Proponents say they could unlock millions of dollars and catalyze countless active transportation projects that wouldn’t otherwise happen.

But they’ve been particularly urgent since the 2022 death of the mother, diplomat and cycling advocate for whom the bill is named — and the advocacy rides her family have organized in her memory every year since.

Known as the Ride For Your Life, these rolling protests have flooded D.C. streets with thousands of cyclists who turned out to demonstrate their support for Langenkamp’s namesake law and other measures to end traffic violence.

Langenkamp’s family recently established a nonprofit that will fight for similar legislation across the country. With each campaign, they’ll organize similar advocacy rides, which the family described as the cornerstone of their efforts. Raskin said these rides were essential to “mobilize focus and attention” around his legislation.

“People keep getting killed on our roads, and almost everywhere that happens, there’s a huge community of people who want to do something about it,” said Dan Langenkamp, Sarah’s husband. “I hope that we can work with those people to help channel their grief and anger into advocacy.”

Recommended Essay: Sarah Langenkamp Loved Biking. She Shouldn’t Have Died Because of It. Dan Langenkamp December 1, 2022

Of course, Ride For Your Life isn’t the first or only organization to adopt the humble group ride as a tool for policy change.

Cyclists who participated in Amsterdam’s Stop De Kindermoord protests in the 70s, for instance, helped transform the Netherlands into the biking capital of the world by laying down alongside their bikes in the street — long before the word “die-in” was common parlance.

More recently, the Magnus White Cycling Safety Act gained significant momentum after the Ride for Magnus: Ride For Your Life turned out more than 4,300 cyclists across 48 states. The provisions of that bill, which would require new cars to carry automatic braking systems capable of detecting cyclists and pedestrians, also appear in the current draft of BUILD America 250.

But Langenkamp says that other bike advocates still struggle to identify the kind of hyper-specific demands that could truly save lives on the road — or to meaningfully engage the powerful people who can fulfill those demands. And even well-intentioned organizes sometimes struggle to successfully tie “awareness” rides to their cause, he said.

With support from an organization that’s done all three, though, he hopes Ride for Your Life can help organizers conduct advocacy rides with real impact — and pass laws with real teeth.

“What we’re trying to do is affect real change on the ground by pairing our rides with legislation or policy asks,” Langenkamp stressed. “We bring in not only the families or people impacted by traffic violence, but also sympathetic legislators, the general public, and advocates to this effort. It actually works in getting things done.”

Recommended Memorial Ride For Teen Cycling Phenom Killed by Driver Hopes to Inspire National Change Kea Wilson August 5, 2024

Both Langenkamp and Rep. Raskin acknowledged that their bill alone won’t end the epidemic of cyclist deaths in America, and that group rides alone aren’t always enough to get good legislation off the ground. Even with much of the Langenkamp act included, the larger bill to which their legislation belongs drastically overfunds highways at the expense of other modes, and it will take all kinds of organizing to change that, including flipping seats in Congress itself.

“That’s really what elections need to be about,” added Raskin. “We need to have a rigorous public conversation about whether or not we are doing enough to invest in our transportation infrastructure in a way that benefits everybody in the country — and not just motorists.”

With Ride For Your Life events planned in Madison, Boston, and D.C. this autumn, Langenkamp hopes his group will continually refine their recipe for demanding change through more rides and smart organizing — and, in the process, potentially create a powerful new community of advocates on wheels.

“We all know that there are more than 100 people killed a day on U.S. roads — and it’s not just cyclists and pedestrians, it’s everybody,” said Langenkamp. “There’s no reason why there should not be more people interested in this subject … I think that we can actually help change the narrative and make this a higher priority issue, if we organize better.”

• A chemical in tires that’s already known to kill spawning salmon when it runs off into rivers may be harmful to humans as well, according to Yale researchers. (E360)
• If the future of transportation is privately owned autonomous vehicles and not fleets of robotaxis, traffic could grind to a complete halt. (City Lab; paywall)
• Buses and trains are a cheaper and more efficient way to move people around than cars, but transit agencies need to figure out how to compete with the fact that a car can take you exactly where you want to go. (Pedestrian Observations)
• The Vision Zero Network recommends addressing inequities in traffic stops by focusing on serious, potentially deadly offenses like speeding and drunk driving, rather than minor equipment infractions like broken taillights.
• Drivers kill thousands of people a year in places like parking lots and driveways that don’t count as roads. (Jalopnik)
• Uber is capping the amount of money employees can spend on AI after the company blew through its AI budget for the year in four months (Tech Crunch), but insists that announcement of layoffs is unrelated (CNBC).
• Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson proposed increasing bus frequency by doubling a 0.15 percent sales tax for King County Transit. (The Urbanist)
• The Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority delayed the unveiling of new train cars, and it’s unclear whether they’ll be ready in time for the World Cup. (11 Alive)
• The redevelopment of Baltimore’s Penn Station is on hold. (Banner)
• Pittsburgh transit advocates rallied in the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg demanding more funding for paratransit to help disabled residents. (WTAE)
• Contrary to the advice of experts like Donald Shoup, Cleveland is lowering the cost of on-street parking. (19 News)
• Drivers keep blocking an East Nashville bike lane. (WKRN)
• The head of Milwaukee County’s government authorized deputies to impound vehicles for owners’ reckless driving. (Urban Milwaukee)
• A California authority signed a contract to electrify 119 miles of high-speed rail. (Railway Age)
• Honolulu’s bikeshare is down to less than 500 bikes from 1,300, partly due to vandalism. (Civil Beat)
• Seattle train service was disrupted when a 70-year-old driver followed her car’s GPS onto elevated tracks. (KIRO)
• Santa Clara prosecutors issued a warrant for 49ers star Brandon Aiyuk’s arrest after he posted a video of himself speeding. (ESPN)
• Bogota, which has the largest bus rapid transit system in the world, is finally getting its metro. (High Speed)
• The UK nationalized the country’s largest private passenger train operator. (LBC)
• London cyclists are being forced to swerve around a billboard in the middle of a new bike path. (Telegraph)

Price floors and supply management programs seem common sense to policymakers when it comes to oil and minerals, but what about US farmers and our overall food system? By: Patti Naylor, FFD president, George Naylor, FFD board member, and Laurel … Continue reading →

Claims that climate scientists have abandoned their most dire scenario have been widely misunderstood. While the highest emissions pathway is now considered unlikely, evidence suggests the climate system may still be tracking toward dangerously high levels of warming.

by David Spratt, first published at Pearls&Irritations

Figure 1: RCPs and SSPsOccasionally, climate science is big news. On 26 May, the New York Times headlined: “Why scientists retired the dire climate scenario used for over a decade”. A good story!

The Australian, true to form, went with “Climate doomsday scenarios just got a major rewrite”, and in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post it was  “The climate apocalypse? Don’t count on it”. There were a host of similar headlines.

Climate deniers and Donald Trump used an old playbook to claim scientific fraud (surprise!), but were called out, with ‘Trump twisted a climate debate beyond recognition’ and ‘Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario’.

So what’s the real story? Did scientists get it wrong, and is warming now likely to be less severe than previously thought?

As in engineering and business and government, scenarios are used by climate scientists to think about plausible alternative futures and their risks. The commonly-used climate scenarios are based on different possible trajectories for human greenhouse gas emissions and the social path humanity takes, and the consequences. And remember, scenarios in the end are simply a product of the minds that imagined them.

Fifteen years ago, four scenarios called representative concentration pathways (RCPs) were developed for the fifth IPCC assessment report in 2014, with RCP2.6 the lowest and RCP8.5 the highest. The numbers are radiative forcing (RF) values in 2100 for each scenario, where RF is the difference between the incoming radiation energy and the outgoing radiation energy in a given climate system, which is an indicator of total expected warming.

In conventional climate science terms, each one unit of RF (in watts per square metre) would in the long run be expected to result in around 0.75°C of warming. This relationship between change in radiative forcing and change in temperature is known as climate sensitivity.

RCP8.5 was sometimes called a ‘business as usual’ scenario, but this was a misnomer, and it was based on an assumption of little or no curbing of  greenhouse gases. Modellers estimated it would result in the end of warming of 5 to 6°C, with a range of 3.0 to 12.6°C.

The sixth IPCC report in 2022 focused on a modified system called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), where the scenarios more explicitly considered social, economic, and technological trends. The SSPs were again expressed as RF values. Figure 1 illustrates both the RCP and SSP scenarios as they relate to total emissions.

Now, in preparation for the modelling project for the next IPCC report due in 2029, known as ScenarioMIP,  scientists have suggested that the highest, ‘worse-case’ RCP8.5 scenario be dropped, because emissions were tracking more in line with one of the middle scenarios, RCP4.5. Hence all those headlines.

So, the ‘worse-case’ global warming case is no longer realistic. Big sighs of relief!

Not so quick. The big question in the end is not the amount of emissions but how hot it gets: the temperature. The focus on emissions in RCPs/SSPs is a bit to one side.

And on the future temperature, here’s the bomb. In a recent post, Ryan Katz-Rosene showed CERES data where the effective radiative forcing (ERF) at the moment is tracking above RCP8.5:

Effective radiative forcing and SSP scenarios.

 CERES is a NASA project that uses satellite and other data to measure the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the amount of infrared energy emitted to space. As Katz says “current forcing observations from CERES really do appear to show a high current ERF value, which (at least at this point in time) does seem to be above the mean ERF expected in RCP8.5.”

[Technically, RF measures the immediate change in energy balance at the top of the atmosphere due to an external driver, while ERF accounts for adjustments in temperature and other factors after the initial change. ERF gives a more comprehensive understanding of the climate response to these changes.]

With the actual radiative forcing higher than the worst-case scenario, all those headlines about things getting better look like a lot of hot air.

So how can actual and future warming, indicated by RF, be tracking the worst case when the emissions trajectory is a middle-of-the-road scenario? The RCP/SSP scenarios were built around greenhouse gas emissions, not around the full suite of forcings and climate feedbacks that determine what the climate system actually does in terms of heating.

The assumptions about the relationship between emissions and temperatures have been too conservative. For example, what is not getting said is that the best estimate of the climate sensitivity has been rising, with perhaps the world’s most eminent climate scientist, Jim Hansen, taking it beyond the IPCC upper-range estimate. In fact, even the current range of modelling, known as CMIP6, produces a higher climate sensitivity than previously thought.

Other factors include reduced aerosol masking, ice-reflection loss, the release of permafrost carbon, and weakening ocean sinks that are not adequately captured by the IPCC or in model assumptions about future warming. Yet they’re showing up in the real-world numbers right now.

What is happening is way beyond IPCC projections. The rate of warming has accelerated by half over the last two decades, driven by reduced aerosols emissions and diminishing cloud cover. Warming has reached 1.5°C, and with an approaching strong El Nino, 2026-27 is likely to be around 1.7°C. Earth’s Energy Imbalance, an indicator of future warming, has doubled in the last 15 years and continues to increase, suggesting a warming trend of 2°C by 2040 is likely. Even global warming of 1°C, a threshold already passed, risks triggering some tipping points. At 1.5°C, six out of 10 studied climate subsystems already show large-scale abrupt shifts across multiple models.

Katz says: “We have such large uncertainty by end of century on climate sensitivity and carbon feedbacks, such that we can’t preclude mean warming of up to 4°C by 2100 even if we successfully pursue an emissions pathway resembling that in RCP4.5. So, again, if sensitivity or carbon feedbacks are not in our favour, there are plenty of scientific findings based on RCP8.5 which could turn out to be right on the mark in meteorological terms later this century, despite being way off on anthropogenic fossil emissions assumptions.”

Any reputable climate scientist over a drink at the bar will tell you that by far the majority of the human population would likely not survive 4°C. And that sounds like a worst case to me.

China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions grew by 2% in the first quarter of 2026, after a rise in the amount of “wasted” wind and solar power.

The country used more coal and gas to generate electricity than in the same quarter a year earlier, despite a record amount of new wind and solar capacity being built.

While the strait of Hormuz crisis has boosted China’s focus on energy security – including through clean energy and electrification – its electricity system is failing to keep up.

The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that, while China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry increased in the first part of 2026, they remain below the peak in early 2024.

Other key findings for the first quarter of 2026 include:

• There was a 23% year-on-year rise in wind-power capacity and 33% for solar.
• There was also a sharp rise in the amount of wind and solar output being “wasted”, as it was not accommodated by the current electricity system.
• As a result, emissions in the power sector increased by 4% year-on-year.
• Power-sector CO2 would have been flat without the rise in “wasted” wind and solar. 
• Emissions in other sectors of the economy grew by 1%.

The key reason for “wasted” wind and solar generation was the inflexible management of coal power plants and power grids, not a lack of grid infrastructure.

In the first quarter of 2026, China’s energy system also began to adjust to the surge in oil and gas prices due to the blockade of the strait of Hormuz.

This continued through April and May, with sharp reductions in oil imports and oil-based chemicals production, as well as the share of gas in electricity generation.

However, the inability to make full use of new wind and solar power plants left China more exposed to the closure of the strait of Hormuz, by increasing the need for other fuels.

This exposure could become more acute if the “super El Niño” that is forecast for later this year limits the electricity output of hydropower, while fossil-fuel supplies remain tight.

Nevertheless, the Hormuz crisis could result in China following a lower-CO2 trajectory than previously expected, if key policies in its 15th five-year plan are fully implemented.

Emissions plateau continues

Recent analysis for Carbon Brief showed that China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry had been “flat or falling” for nearly two years.

The latest analysis points to a rise of 2% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, as shown in the figure below. For now, however, emissions remain below the peak in March 2024.

China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, million tonnes of CO2, rolling 12-month totals until March 2026. Source: Emissions are estimated from National Bureau of Statistics data on production of different fuels and industrial products, China Customs data on imports and exports and WIND Information data on changes in inventories, applying emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, IPCC default emission factors for metals process emissions and annual emissions factors per tonne of cement production until 2025. Chemical industry process emissions are estimated from fossil fuel use, subtracting carbon embedded in products. Sector breakdown of coal consumption is estimated using coal consumption data from WIND Information and electricity data from the National Energy Administration. The consumption of petrol, diesel and jet fuel is adjusted to match quarterly total sales reported by Sinopec.

In previous quarters, emissions had fallen in almost every sector of the economy, with the exception of the coal-based chemicals industry.

The latest quarter saw more widespread increases, with the power sector by far the largest source of emissions growth, as shown in the figure below.

Year-on-year change in China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, for the period January-March 2026, million tonnes of CO2. Source: Emissions are estimated from National Bureau of Statistics data on production of different fuels and industrial products, China Customs data on imports and exports and WIND Information data on changes in inventories, applying emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, IPCC default emission factors for metals process emissions and annual emissions factors per tonne of cement production until 2025. Chemical industry process emissions are estimated from fossil fuel use, subtracting carbon embedded in products. Sector breakdown of coal consumption is estimated using coal consumption data from WIND Information and electricity data from the National Energy Administration. The consumption of petrol, diesel and jet fuel is adjusted to match quarterly total sales reported by Sinopec.

Emissions from other sectors were relatively stable in aggregate, with some rising and others continuing to decline.

Coal consumption in the chemical industry continued strong growth, increasing by 20%, but showed no change in trend after the closure of the strait of Hormuz and surge in oil prices.

(This is contrary to some commentary arguing that the closure of the strait of Hormuz has resulted in a marked increase in the output of China’s coal-chemicals industry.)

The apparent consumption of oil products rebounded in January-February, driven by transportation, but declined slightly in March as oil prices surged.

Emissions from the cement and steel industries continued to fall, as real estate investment contracted another 11% in the first quarter of 2026, following a 17% reduction in 2025. Cement production fell 7% and crude steel output by 5%.

‘Wasted’ wind and solar power

After falling in 2025, power generation from coal and gas increased by 4% in the first quarter of the year.

Power demand grew at 5.2% and hydropower generation increased 9%. Under these circumstances, the record growth in solar and wind power capacity in 2025 should have covered demand growth and pushed fossil-power generation down.

The trend was accentuated in March, as power demand grew just 3.5%, hydropower output increased 9% and yet fossil-power generation increased 4.2%.

The reason for fossil-power generation growth was a sharp drop in the electricity output per unit of installed capacity for both solar and wind power, known as the “capacity factor”.

If capacity factors were stable, the increased solar and wind capacity would have been expected to result in 160 terawatt hours (TWh) of additional clean-power generation during the first quarter, compared with the same time last year, with nuclear and hydro bringing the total to 170TWh. This would have comfortably exceeded the 120TWh increase in power demand.

However, the actual increase in clean-power generation was just 60TWh, with wind showing almost no growth.

While wind power capacity grew by 23% from the first quarter of 2025 to the same period in 2026, an increase of 120GW, the average capacity factor fell from 27% to 22%, a reduction of 18%. This implies that power generation from wind only grew 1% year-on-year. In the case of solar, capacity grew by 33%, but the average capacity factor fell by 11%, resulting in 18% growth in solar-power generation.

It is normal for solar and especially wind capacity factors to vary year-to-year due to weather conditions, but the fall this year was an extension of a longer trend. The average capacity factors of solar and wind have fallen by 19% and 10%, respectively, from 2022 to 2025.

A quarter of the fall in capacity factors over the three-year period is explained by the increase in reported curtailment. This refers to the amount of electricity that is effectively “wasted”, or curtailed, because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.

Nor can the remainder of the fall in capacity factors be explained by the change in weather conditions, as both wind and solar conditions improved on a national-average basis from 2022 to 2025.

In the first quarter of 2026, approximately half of the drop in wind capacity factor and a quarter of the drop in solar capacity factor was explained by weather conditions, implying that the rest is due to increased curtailment resulting from inadequate grid management and integration. 

One clear symptom of increased curtailment is that in January-February, both solar and wind conditions were actually better than last year, but capacity factors still fell.

The fact that capacity factors have fallen significantly more than would be expected based on reported curtailment and weather conditions indicates that a lot of curtailment goes unreported, either because it is excluded from the statistical definition, or because there are gaps in reporting.

Market participants have long noted that actual curtailment is much higher than reported in official statistics.

Official data on curtailment only includes “system reasons”, while excluding some lost generation linked to market trading, grid-connection conditions and other “special” causes.

The figure below shows actual electricity generation from wind and solar plants (dark blue), the amount that would have been generated if reported curtailment had not taken place (light blue) and the level expected if the rate of curtailment had stayed the same (mid-blue).

In total, wind and solar could have generated an extra 170TWh of electricity in the first quarter of 2026, if the rate of curtailment had not gone up in the preceding years. This is more than the total power generation of France over the same period.

Electricity generation from solar (left) and wind power (right) in China, terawatt hours per 12-month period. Red: Electricity actually fed into the grid. Yellow: Generation before reported levels of “curtailment”, where some electricity is discarded due to grid congestion. Blue: Generation if the rate of curtailment had stayed constant. Source: China Electricity Council monthly data on installed capacity and utilisation; National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center data on curtailment; utilisation at constant curtailment projected by fitting a regression model between historical utilisation data and weather data from NASA Power and CFSv2 for power plant locations taken from Global Energy Monitor data.

The largest reductions in capacity factors, after controlling for variations in weather conditions, came from Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Liaoning. In these northern provinces, the heating season is a challenging time for grid managers due to inflexible operation of plants that provide both heat and power.

More broadly, the key reason for curtailment is inflexible grid management. Flexible operation of coal and gas-fired power plants could very substantially increase the amount of solar and wind power the grid can accommodate.

Yet currently, coal-fired power generation is largely operated via medium- and long-term contracts to supply fixed amounts of electricity at fixed prices, meaning there is no incentive for adjustments in output to make space for solar and wind.

Similarly, electricity trading between provinces is predominantly contracted annually, preventing the variable output of solar and wind from being transmitted between jurisdictions in real time.

These issues have a clear impact on the amount of wind and solar that is curtailed. For example, power-system modeling carried out for the year 2023 indicates that flexible power-grid operation would have essentially eliminated the need for curtailment.

The government has also recognised solar and wind curtailment as one of the central challenges of the energy transition.

Recent policies have called for increased inter-province trading and improved flexibility of coal-power plants as the solutions, implicitly recognising these as key issues to address.

Recent large increases in storage capacity, including pumped hydro and batteries, should have improved the integration of wind and solar into the grid. But there is a lack of incentives for storage operators that limits the benefits the system can derive from the technology.

The government has implicitly recognised this and called for establishing electricity pricing that enables energy storage to “participate fairly”.

Meanwhile, China’s new renewable-pricing rules, which shifted existing solar and wind plants to selling electricity on the market, rather than being compensated directly by the grid operator, does not seem to have reduced curtailment so far.

Most provinces only finalised their plans for implementing the policy in late 2025, which left little time for the market and operators to adapt.

China is aiming to build a “new type power system”, capable of integrating large amounts of wind and solar into the grid by 2027. In the meantime, the government has also called for “reasonably pacing” utility-scale “new energy” capacity additions to match the pace at which provinces think they are able to improve the “regulation capacity” of their grids.

How the Hormuz crisis is affecting China’s energy sector

China’s energy system has started, since March, to adjust to the surge in oil and gas prices triggered by the closure of the strait of Hormuz. There have been sharp reductions in oil imports, the share of gas in thermal power generation and in oil-based chemical production.

The consumption of gas fell overall in March, even as consumption in the power sector increased. The power sector fuel mix shifted from gas to coal, but the increase in overall thermal power generation still pushed gas use up in the sector.

High gas prices had already been straining household finances before the current crisis. Millions of households were shifted from coal stoves to gas-based heating as a part of efforts to tackle air pollution during the past decade. However, the gas-price subsidies created to enable this shift have expired in recent years, leading to a rise in heating bills.

China’s oil imports started falling sharply immediately after oil prices surged, with net imports falling even further as exports were restricted. The fall has continued into May, with shipments falling by over 40% year-on-year in the first three weeks of the month.

In the first quarter of the year, state-owned oil major Sinopec reported oil product sales up 4.8%. Apparent consumption of oil products had increased 5.5% in January-February, but fell -0.3% in March, indicating an early impact of the price surge, although the late timing of the Chinese New Year also had an effect.

Electric vehicles have continued to gain market share in 2026, reaching 53% of vehicle sales in April, up from 47% a year ago.

Electricity demand for EV charging grew over 50% year-on-year in March. The large number of plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road means that drivers can switch from petrol to power quickly when there is more of an incentive to do so.

Moreover, 24% of highway trips during the 1 May holiday were made by EVs, even though they only make up 15% of all registered cars. This shows that EVs tend to be driven more than average, making a bigger dent in oil use than their share in the fleet would suggest.

Crude oil processing volumes fell by 2% in March and 6% in April, after growth in January-February. Plastics output growth moderated in March and turned into a decline in April.

The increase in oil prices has boosted the profitability of the highly carbon-intensive coal-to-chemicals industry. There has also been speculation that the industry would have forcefully increased output in response to the Hormuz crisis, enabling China to cut back on oil use. The industry was, however, already operating at high capacity utilisation before the current crisis, reported at an average of 87% in the first half of 2025. This means there was little headroom in the sector to raise output in the short term.

Coal use in the chemical industry increased 19% in January-February and 22% in March, showing a rapidly rising trend, but no step change after the start of the crisis.

The global fossil-fuel crisis is also affecting China’s clean-energy industry through overseas demand. Exports of solar, batteries and EVs recorded 56% growth year-on-year in the first quarter, reaching $55bn. This increase was partially driven by front-loading of shipments ahead of changes to tax rebates to solar and battery exports at the end of March, but the value of exports also grew 38% in April, an indication of strong underlying demand.

Implications of the crisis for China’s transition

The oil-and-gas crisis represents an opportunity for both clean energy and coal. The economics of electrification and clean-energy production, as well as of domestic coal production, have improved dramatically as imported fossil fuels have become more expensive.

At least as importantly, the closure of the strait of Hormuz and the resulting global fossil-fuel crisis closely mirror Chinese policymakers’ long-standing concern about reliance on seaborne fossil fuels. This is likely to reinforce their focus on energy security.

The previous fossil-fuel crisis, in 2021-2022, led to a new wave of coal-power plants, coal mines and coal-to-chemicals plants being built in China.

This time around, any expansion in coal mining is expected to be limited, both by the government’s “anti-involution” drive, which aims to stem harmful price competition, as well as by the carbon constraints in China’s climate goals.

Domestic coal production fell in the first four months of the year, despite a rise in oil and gas as well as coal prices. Rising coal prices will reduce the profitability of coal-fired power generation, at least for the next few months.

The perceived need for further new coal-power projects is also limited by the fact that, after record additions in 2025, there was still another 206GW of coal-fired capacity under construction in January, due to large volumes of permitting during the previous five years.

The energy regulator recently called on provinces to “strictly limit” the addition of new coal-power plants and other “regulating” power capacity in areas with sufficient firm capacity.

There is also a ceiling on the upside for coal in the current crisis, because gas plays a limited role in China’s energy system. This leaves little space for replacing gas with coal.

The exception is the coal-to-chemicals industry, which can replace oil and gas, albeit at the cost of very high carbon emissions. As a result, investment in the industry will likely get a further boost, even though the economic incentive is lower than it may seem.

While crude oil prices for delivery this summer have increased by more than $40 per barrel since the start of the year, 2030 prices are only up $5. This is a more relevant benchmark, given that a new coal-to-chemicals plant will take several years to build and commission.

The coal-to-chemicals expansion will also be limited by the new system to control carbon emissions. In particular, the requirement for local governments to compensate for carbon emissions from new industrial projects by closing down existing capacity, if these controls are implemented effectively.

Since the previous fossil-fuel crisis, the concept of energy security has become broader, encompassing clean energy and electrification, rather than being limited to coal and fossil fuels. This shift is also clear from how state media has been covering energy security in the wake of the war on Iran.

As such, the oil-and-gas crunch is likely to speed up the electrification of transportation and buildings. It also strengthens the case for “green fuels”, referring to green hydrogen and synthetic gaseous and liquid fuels produced from it, which are an important priority in the new five-year plan.

Solar and wind also become more attractive, economically and politically, as a result of the crisis. The upside may be limited by the dominant narrative that they have grown faster than the grid can manage, rather than being limited by institutional constraints. Nevertheless, they will benefit from fossil fuels – including coal – becoming more expensive and volatile.

Still, curtailment has become a key issue affecting the pace of China’s energy transition. It both reduces the immediate benefits of clean energy and undermines further investment in clean capacity, by increasing investment risks and cutting into returns.

The flipside of the current rise in curtailment is that when the installed wind, solar and energy storage capacity is put to full use, the supply of clean energy will increase substantially.

As noted, a key priority for the government in the next few years is to build a “new type of power system”, capable of integrating large amounts of variable renewable capacity.

The balance between how much the current crisis benefits coal or clean energy will depend on implementation of key climate and energy provisions in the 15th five-year plan.

If power-system reforms that benefit solar, wind and storage are implemented, while carbon-emission controls limit the expansion of coal-to-chemicals, then China is likely to follow a lower-CO2 emission trajectory than expected before the crisis.

About the data

Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, as well as from industry data provider WIND Information and from Sinopec, China’s largest oil refiner.

Electricity generation from wind and solar, along with thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.

Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power were taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.

Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power-sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data. 

CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2021. The CO2 emissions factor for cement is based on annual estimates up to 2024.

For oil, apparent consumption of transport fuels – diesel, petrol and jet fuel – is taken from Sinopec quarterly results, with monthly disaggregation based on production minus net exports. The consumption of these three fuels is labeled as oil product consumption in transportation, as it is the dominant sector for their use.

Apparent consumption of other oil products is calculated from refinery throughput, with the production of the transport fuels and the net exports of other oil products subtracted.

Estimated non-energy use of fossil fuels is subtracted from total chemical industry fossil fuel consumption, and process emissions are calculated based on fossil fuel consumption with carbon retained in products subtracted. Emissions from the incineration of plastics are based on a peer-reviewed estimate of plastics incineration in 2022, combined with growth rates in the overall power generation from waste-to-energy plants. Metals industry process emissions are calculated using industrial output data and IPCC default emission factors.

Reported curtailment, and capacity utilisation in the absence of reported curtailment, is calculated as the complement of the “offtake rates” (利用率) reported by National New Energy Consumption Monitoring and Early Warning Center monthly by province for solar and wind.

Total curtailment is estimated by comparing solar and wind capacity utilisation predicted based on weather conditions, and in the absence of curtailment, to reported utilisation. Utilisation is predicted by fitting regression models to reported monthly utilisation and weather conditions in 2020-2023.

Weather data used for predicting utilisation are hourly wind speed, temperature, solar irradiation and humidity at solar and wind power plant locations in each province from NASA Power and CFSv2. Locations are taken from Global Energy Monitor data.

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“No better day to ride the D (train) than election day,” posted Tom Steyer yesterday morning at 11:12 a.m. on X.

The problem isn’t that Steyer talked about transit on election day. The problem is that he waited until election day. California voters consistently support transit funding at the ballot box, yet no major candidate in the governor’s race made transit a centerpiece of their campaign.

In a crowded Democratic primary where candidates struggled to distinguish themselves from one another, a bold, unapologetic vision for better buses, trains, and public transportation could have provided exactly the contrast voters were looking for. Instead, candidates largely ceded the issue and spent the campaign talking about gas prices, taxes, and housing, leaving millions of transit riders without a champion in the race.

The impromptu election-day interview Steyer gave to Torched editor Alissa Walker may end up being the most substantive transit discussion of the entire governor’s race.

It almost certainly won’t be enough to save his campaign. As of election night, Steyer was running a distant third in California’s top-two primary. More mail ballots remain to be counted, but a deficit of nearly eight percentage points is a difficult gap to close.

Still, the election offered another reminder that transit remains a politically potent issue when candidates choose to talk about it.

Breaking: California Voters Back Transit Measure

Voters in Sonoma and Marin counties overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure extending the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) district’s quarter-cent sales tax for another 30 years. For more, visit, “Election Result Underscores Message: Bay Area Wants Car Dependence to End” at Streetsblog San Francisco.

The tax, first approved in 2008 and set to expire in 2029, generates roughly $51 million annually and serves as the backbone of SMART’s operating budget. Early returns showed support hovering around 70 percent in both Marin and Sonoma Counties, well above the simple majority needed for passage.

The victory comes as Bay Area leaders prepare for larger transit funding fights this fall. Regional measures for the November ballot to support both transit regionally, and SF Muni in particular, gathered nearly twice the signatures required.

As we’ve written before, supporting transit appears to be a politically popular position.

Many Tax Measures Didn’t Pass

That lesson becomes even clearer when viewed alongside the broader election results.

With people’s budgets stretched thin by inflation, it was overall a bad night for tax and fee measures throughout California, demonstrating that the passage of Measure B in the Bay was a true victory for transit.

Just miles away in the East Bay, Oakland voters rejected a parcel tax that would have funded general services. In San Diego, a measure to tax vacant homes is also failing. Funds from that tax would also go to the general fund. Throughout Monterey County, smaller municipalities were also rejecting non-transit taxes. Heck, even San Francisco rejected a CEO Tax.

In Los Angeles County, voters rejected a new tax to fund emergency services.

In the City of Los Angeles, a new tax on hotel occupancy also failed. Two measures that clarified that taxes on cannabis products applies to all sellers of said products and that hotel/transient taxes apply to all short-term rentals did pass.

Taken together, the results suggest that voters were generally skeptical of new taxes. That’s what makes the SMART victory stand out.

Candidates looking for a way to stand out in future statewide races might want to take note. If transit is going to be part of a campaign message, it should be embraced early and often. That’s how to stand out in a crowded field.