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Brazil-focused Serabi Gold (AIM:SRB, TSX:SBI) said mining and milling continue as usual at its Palito Complex and Coringa mine despite two fatal underground accidents last week.

The company said a worker died on Jan. 30 in a mining-related traffic accident at the Palito underground operation, with no other injuries reported. A week earlier, another employee was killed at the Coringa underground mine in an accident at the production face.

Serabi said it has notified Brazilian authorities, who are conducting formal investigations, and has launched an immediate review of operational effectiveness and safety procedures, signalling tighter oversight and a sharper focus on workforce safety.

The company’s focus is on the Tapajós region in Pará State in northern Brazil, where the Palito Complex has consistently produced between 30,000 and 40,000 ounces of gold a year. 

Serabi plans to double output in the coming years through construction of the Coringa mine and recently reported a copper-gold porphyry discovery on its extensive exploration licence.

The miner is headquartered in the UK and maintains a secondary office in Toronto, Canada.

There is a convergence manifesting in Minnesota. Hundreds of thousands of people are revolting against the federal government and the murders of Renee Good on...

The post The Canadian Boomerang in Minnesota first appeared on Spring.

Lawmakers in Ghana are weighing up whether to greenlight one of Africa’s largest lithium mines after civil society groups urged them to do more to ensure that the project benefits the country and supports green development.

Ghana granted Australian miner Atlantic Lithium a lease to open the country’s first lithium mine in the hope of capitalising on the EV-driven boom for the silvery metal, which is used to manufacture batteries for electric cars and other clean tech products.

But as the deal awaited ratification by parliament in December, the government withdrew the agreement after campaigners and analysts in Ghana warned that the terms risked shortchanging the West African nation at a time when it is seeking to benefit from the scramble for battery minerals.

Atlantic Lithium, which had earlier raised concerns that falling lithium prices were affecting the viability of the project, has since put forward a revised agreement. This new deal would see it pay higher royalties to the government when lithium prices rise, as they have since the start of this year. Lawmakers are expected to review the new terms of the contract for the much-delayed project this month.

Like other resource-rich African nations, Ghana, the continent’s largest gold producer, is seeking a bigger share of mining revenues to spur development and benefit local people.

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Experts told Climate Home News the negotiations with Atlantic Lithium highlighted the difficulties for governments to negotiate preferential terms with mining companies, on which they depend for revenues and expertise.

“Lithium is Ghana’s first green mineral and will set the benchmark for future critical mineral agreements,” opposition lawmaker Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, a member of the committee on lands and natural resources, told local media in December. “Weak deals now risk setting a poor precedent for the country.”

Ghana’s lithium potential

Atlantic Lithium says the Ewoyaa project could produce 3.6 million tonnes of lithium spodumene concentrates over the mine’s 12-year lifespan – turning Ghana into one of Africa’s top lithium producers and a significant new supply source for the EV battery industry outside of established producers in Australia, Chile and China.

The lithium is expected to be exported to the US and further refined for use in EV batteries. Atlantic Lithium financed the exploration of the mining site by forward-selling Ghana’s lithium resources to Elevra, a North American lithium producer which has a supply agreement with Tesla.

Atlantic Lithium previously obtained a concession to cut the royalty rate it would pay Ghana from the mandated 10% to 5%. The company argued that the adjustment was necessary to make the project viable after lithium prices had plummeted by more than 80% since 2023.

The company’s move sparked a public outcry. Policy think-tanks that analysed the agreement described it as “colonial” and warned that parliament risked “repeating history’s mistakes” if it approved the deal. The Natural Resource Governance Institute challenged Atlantic Lithium’s claims about its revised profitability and urged the government to scrutinise the assumptions made by the company.

In light of the criticism, the government withdrew the deal in December.

“When governments depend on mining projects to project a sense of economic progress, they stop negotiating for value and start negotiating out of fear,” Bright Simons, of the Accra-based IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, told Climate Home News.

A man bikes past a vendor selling football shirts in downtown Accra (Photo credit: IMF Photo/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds) A balancing act

Atlantic Lithium has since put forward a revised agreement based on a proposal by the minister for lands and natural resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, to establish a sliding scale for royalty rates based on lithium prices.

The scale would start at 5% when lithium spodumene prices are below $1,500 per tonne and rise to 12% when prices exceed $3,000 per tonne. Lithium prices are currently at a two-year high and climbed above $2,000 at the start of the year, as analysts forecast stronger demand growth.

Henry Wilkinson, Atlantic Lithium’s communications manager, told Climate Home News the revised agreement was aligned with current legislation and would “ensure that value is generated for Ghana and Ghanaians”.

The government, he said, should find “the appropriate balance” between attracting foreign investment and retaining value from its nascent lithium industry.

“If the government sets fiscal terms that are deemed unattractive for companies looking to advance projects in Ghana, the country risks missing out on securing a position within the value chain; particularly with other countries, such as Mali, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa all moving ahead with their lithium production ambitions,” he added.

Fear of missing out

But this new approach hasn’t convinced everyone. For Simons, of the IMANI think-tank, the revised agreement still falls short of Ghana’s interests.

“African youth are tired of being told all the time that Africa is rich underground when the signs of destitution are so stark above ground,” he told Climate Home News.

“The narrative that the critical minerals rush is about building the next phase of the global economy has created a massive new wave of anxiety that the continent will miss out yet again. It feels like [a] determined betrayal.”

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• Jan 26, 2024 Clean Energy Frontier Lithium boom: Zimbabwe looks to China to secure a place in the EV battery supply chain Chinese investors have flocked to Zimbabwe to secure lithium supplies, promising local development. But analysts warn Zimbabwe needs more robust governance for communities to reap the benefits Read more

Atlantic Lithium will allocate 1% of the project’s revenues to a community fund that will finance development projects in the local area. But the protracted negotiations have left people living near the mining site in limbo.

Farming communities say Atlantic Lithium told them to stop planting crops three years ago because they would need to be resettled ahead of the mine opening. While they await a decision on the mine, no one has yet received compensation for the loss of earnings, the Ghanaian NGO Friends of the Nation told Climate Home News. The community representatives in the negotiations with Atlantic Lithium receive stipends from the company, the NGO added, which it says poses a conflict of interest.

Atlantic Lithium said that the delays have been “beyond the company’s control”.

Unequal bargaining power

For Marisa Lourenço, a South Africa-based risk consultant, African governments are too reliant on foreign expertise for extracting their mineral resources and this often limits their bargaining power.

“The broad absence of local beneficiation means that African governments can do very little with their resources and this keeps them reliant on the terms put forward by foreign mining companies,” she said.

In Ghana, the mining industry is the largest tax-paying sector in the country. And the initial agreement to develop the Ewoyaa mine was based on a feasibility study carried out by Atlantic Lithium, said Patrick Stephenson, Ghana country manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute.

Stephenson told Climate Home News that delays to the ratification of the project’s mining lease show that the government needs to rely on its own data and analysis to inform decisions “rather than on company-determined interests and priorities”.

That could include the creation of a state‑led minerals analytical unit capable of conducting its own profitability modelling, price benchmarking, feasibility studies and project valuation, he added.

The post West Africa’s first lithium mine awaits go-ahead as Ghana seeks better deal  appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum, “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” But what does that mean for Indigenous Peoples, who have long demanded a seat at the table, only to find that the table itself has been set by others – that their territories, governance, and futures remain on the menu?

Carney’s address in Davos, Switzerland earlier this month was widely praised, resulting in a rare standing ovation. It referenced “a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics” and argued that the rules-based order that “middle powers” relied on, is no more. He argued that countries like Canada must seek alternatives to a system that can be exploited by the powerful. Coincidentally, Carney’s words reflect parallels to the relationship of power and exclusion that underscores Canada’s treatment of Indigenous Peoples. 

From Davos to DRIPA

In our home province of British Columbia (BC), Premier David Eby has recently stated his government’s intent to amend the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). Citing ill-informed and unfounded concerns about private property rights following the Quw’utsun (Cowichan) decision, Eby also plans to appeal the court decision. All of this, in addition to new provincial legislation designed to circumvent Indigenous rights, and a growing residential school denialism movement.

The recent developments in BC demonstrate the frailty of Canada’s “reconciliation efforts.” Carney’s address does not mention Indigenous Peoples, of course, or climate change – instead noting his own plans to fast-track energy projects which will exacerbate the overriding of Indigenous rights and title.

Since contact, Canada’s relationship with Indigenous Peoples has been unbalanced, extractive, and harmful. These historical patterns are rebranded through time, from taming the wilderness in the contact era to the more contemporary idea of economic necessity – all in the service of legitimizing resource extraction. When Indigenous rights and title stand in the way of the “national interest,” Canada turns to legislation, the courts (when convenient), and political discourse.

Make no mistake, the system of intensifying great power Carney warns about is Canada – still a part of the same “rules-based order,” but in many ways, the description of “great powers” is more convincingly apt when applied to Canada. 

In his remarks, Carney reaffirmed Canada’s stated “commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.” At the same time, the urgency of present political moments can make it difficult to discern ongoing violations of our human rights (Whyte 2019). In the United States, this is unfolding in real time, with the threat of state-sanctioned armed violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As tensions continue to escalate, there have been increased concerns on both sides of the imposed border about the violations of our Indigenous and human rights. Engaging with Carney’s call to be “clear-eyed,” we have an opportunity to reflect critically on the relationship between public commitments and their realizations in practice. 

Canada has a long history of using militarized law enforcement to quell Indigenous resistance at home – UN Charter, human rights, UNDRIP, even Canadian law (a rules-based order) notwithstanding. This is justified by appealing to the “national interest.” The Oka Crisis, the Mi’kmaq Lobster Fishery Dispute, Fairy Creek Blockade, and the Coastal Gaslink conflict all represent militarized conflict over the extraction of natural resources within Indigenous territories. Given this worrying trend, communities who oppose the most recently green-lit Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline construction are concerned about troubling times ahead.

The intensification of the climate crisis, escalating geopolitical tensions, and continued undermining of Indigenous rights all contribute to the disconnections that are rapidly becoming apparent within and between Nations. As Carney observes, “we are in a rupture, not a transition.” The hypocrisy in this statement is apparent to Indigenous people who have faced the brunt of Canadian power. But there is more than hypocrisy here – there is an erasure of Indigenous participation in Canada’s approach to the post-rules based order.

If there is one key difference between the international order and the Canadian order, it’s Carney’s reference to “rupture.” There has not yet been a rupture in the rules governing Indigenous people and the Crown. But, there should be. New Constellations of Co-Resistance

It is time for Indigenous people to seriously seek out alternatives; to turn our attention towards forming what Leanne Simpson calls constellations of co-resistance (2017). These constellations uphold our responsibilities to each other and to our territories; a re-framing that will involve active, practical work as well as intentional political engagement (Gould, Martinez, and Hoelting 2023). It is in these constellations of co-resistance, these relationalities, that we can work towards our collective liberation (Simpson 2017; Starblanket and Stark 2018). 

Recentering relationality offers a more sustainable path forward: one grounded in responsibility, reciprocity, and shared authority rather than accommodation, coercion, and legislative strong-arming. Now is not the time to succumb to the powers that be, or to fall prey to divisionary state tactics we see increasingly on display in the era of “economic reconciliation.” Instead, we need to move beyond incremental changes to begin to address the power structures and oppressive systems of the “old world order” that we are still very much living in. 

Indigenous internationalism and solidarity involve challenging imposed and figurative borders, and “decentering the state” (Corntassel, 2021, p. 73). By doing so, we actively resist the colonial norms of individualism, cognitive imperialism, and extractivism. As Alley (2025) argues “solidarity is…both our greatest strength and our greatest weapon in our common struggles for liberation, self-determination, justice, and human rights (p.165).” Accountability and responsibility to our Nations, relationalities, and Indigenous internationalisms has transformative potential. Of course, this is a vision many of us subscribe to. Now we must do the work of realizing it in tangible, practical terms. 

Just as Carney proposes to middle powers – it is time to strategize. To take our territories, governance, and futures off the menu by resisting the fragmentation of our relationalities within and between Nations. This resistance will not be without challenge. As Starblanket and Stark (2018) note, “through our choices we have the potential to actively change the world we inhabit (p.177).” Coalition-building, coming together in real time and space, building our Nation-to-Nation and international constellations of co-resistance is still possible. Let us – Indigenous Peoples – take one sure thing from Carney’s address:

“the powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.” Endnotes

Alley, Kim. 2025. “Global Grassroots Indigenous Internationalism in a Time of Genocide.” Native American and Indigenous Studies 12(1): 160-169. https://doi/org/10.1353/nai.2025.a957116

Corntassel, Jeff. 2021. “Life Beyond the State: Regenerating Indigenous International Relations and Everyday Challenges to Settler Colonialism.” Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies 2021(1):71-97.

De Bruin, Tabitha. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act [DRIPA], 2019. https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/19044 

Gould, Rachelle., Martinez, Doreen., and Hoelting, Kristin. 2020. Exploring Indigenous relationality to inform the relational turn in sustainability science. Ecosystems and People. 19(1). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2229452 

Simpson, Leanne B. 2017. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press. Starblanket, Gina., and Heidi Kiiwetinepisiik Stark. 2018. “Towards a Relational Paradigm – Four Points for Consideration: Knowledge, Gender, Land, and Modernity.” In Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous Settler-Relations and Earth Teachings, edited by M. Asch., J. Tully, and John Borrows. University of Toronto Press. 

Whyte Kyle. 2019. “Too late for indigenous Climate Justice: Ecological and Relational Tipping Points.” WIREs Climate Change 11(3):1–7. https://knowledgecircles.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Whyte-2019.pdf

Citation: Wale, Janna and Michaela M. McGuire. “Reflections on “Rupture”: Mark Carney’s New World Order & an Indigenous Response,” Yellowhead Institute. February 03, 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/reflections-on-rupture-mark-carneys-new-world-order-an-indigenous-response/

Artwork by Alyssa Wale

The post Reflections on “Rupture”: Mark Carney’s New World Order & an Indigenous Response appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

The year 2010 was a reckoning for Japan’s economic security. 

On September 7, the Chinese fishing trawler Minjinyu 5179 refused an order by Japan’s coast guard to leave disputed waters near the Senkaku Islands, which are known in China as Diaoyu. The vessel then rammed two patrol boats, escalating a decades-long territorial feud.

Japan responded by arresting the captain, Zhan Qixiong, under domestic law, a move Beijing considered an unacceptable assertion of Japanese sovereignty. Amid mounting protests in both countries and the collapse of high-level talks, China cut exports of rare earth elements to Japan, which relied upon its geopolitical adversary for 90 percent of its supply. The move reverberated throughout the global economy as companies like Toyota and Panasonic were left without materials crucial to the production of everything from hybrid cars to personal electronics.

It wasn’t long before Japan gave in and let Qixiong go. The crisis, which garnered worldwide attention, became a catalyst for Japan’s push to secure a reliable supply of critical minerals. “That was the turning point,” said Takahiro Kamisuna, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Fifteen years later, that reckoning has only deepened.

China still provides 60 percent of Japan’s critical minerals, a reliance that has grown riskier as Beijing asserts its position as the world’s dominant supplier. Last month, Japan took a bold step to break that dependence when it launched a five-week deep-sea mining test off Minamitorishima Island. A crew of 130 researchers aboard the Chikyu — Japanese for “earth” — will use what is essentially a robotic vacuum cleaner to collect mud from a depth of 6,000 meters, marking the world’s first attempt at prolonged collection of minerals from great depths.

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Seabed mud off the coast of that uninhabited island, which sits 1,180 miles southeast of Tokyo, is rich in rare earths like neodymium and yttrium — distinct from the potato-shaped polymetallic nodules often associated with marine extraction. Such materials are essential for electric vehicles, solar panels, advanced weapons systems, and other technology.

The expedition, which is expected to end February 14, is being led by the Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology, which did not respond to a request for comment. It comes three months after the country signed an agreement with the United States to collaborate on securing a supply of critical minerals. It also propels Japan to the forefront of a growing debate over how far nations should go to secure these materials. Deep-sea mining “is not a new thing,” Kamisuna said, “it’s just gaining more attention mainly because of geopolitical tensions.”

The trawler incident highlighted a vulnerability that successive governments vowed to alleviate. Many criticized then-prime minister Naoto Kan of the country’s center-left party for capitulating to China, but he pledged to never again let Japan’s industrial future hinge on a single supplier. His successor, Shinzo Abe of the center-right party, was more aggressive and saw critical minerals as not just an economic issue, but a matter of national security that must be addressed even if it meant exploiting the deep sea. 

Establishing a domestic supply could help Japan reach its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, a high priority for Yoshihide Suga, who succeeded Abe. Although Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, an Abe protégé who assumed office late last year, supports the 2050 timeline, she has said the transition must not risk Japan’s industrial competitiveness and energy stability. 

Takaichi has proposed slashing subsidies for large-scale solar projects or batteries, largely because so much of that technology is imported from China. Instead, she has hailed nuclear power as the path toward carbon neutrality. With the mining experiment unfolding in the Pacific, Takaichi hopes to secure a strategic reserve of minerals to protect key industries.

But Japan doesn’t face an either-or choice, said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “Energy security and energy transition are closely tied,” she said.

Read Next What changed for deep-sea mining in 2025? Everything. Anita Hofschneider

“To me, it’s much more about the pace, not so much the direction,” said Nakano, who has worked for the U.S. Department of Energy and for the energy attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. “I don’t find Takaichi’s way of framing this dual challenge — energy security and decarbonization — unique to Japan. A lot of G7 countries are starting to recalibrate again, so they do have to think about international competitiveness. Direction-wise, [Japan] is just aligning itself with the political establishment and the industry.”

Unlike China, Japan lacks the sedimentary geology associated with rare earth deposits, requiring it to look toward the waters within its exclusive economic zones. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Japan has the right to exploit the resources within 200 nautical miles of its coastline, which includes the atoll island of Minamitorishima. 

Although the minerals to be found there lie nearly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, proponents of digging them up argue the challenge of extracting them and the cost of refining them is justified by mounting geopolitical tension. With Takaichi’s recent political jabs at Beijing, China has begun choking off its exports to Japan. Nakano said Japanese officials seem “confident” in the outcome of the experiment. “They’ve determined that it merits to have this demonstration of technologies and equipment this time around,” she said.

Japan’s foray into deep-sea mining comes amid mounting concern about the ecological cost of such technology. Scientists and environmental groups warn that marine extraction is racing ahead of our understanding of the impacted ecosystems. They are particularly concerned about sediment plumes, noise and light pollution, and damage to habitats and food webs, noting that scars left by equipment could render the seafloor uninhabitable for decades, even centuries.

“A tiny little nudge, and the whole seafloor is disturbed,” said Travis Washburn, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. He studies deep-sea environments and human impacts on marine ecosystems, and he has analyzed the waters around Minamitorishima Island and represented Japan at International Seabed Authority workshops. He believes that mining rare earths from mud could have the same impact as mining nodules. “I think that they’re both pretty much going to destroy the habitat directly affected.”

Government officials insist the ecological impacts will be closely monitored. But assessing them could be difficult, because the seafloor around the island, home to sea cucumbers, sponges, corals, and potentially rare endemic species — remains the subject of intense study. Scientists fear these ecosystems may be permanently altered before anyone assesses them. As with many extractive industries, Washburn noted, technology is often deployed before anyone fully understands its environmental impacts.

Shigeru Tanaka, deputy director general of the Pacific Asia Resource Center, is an outspoken critic of deep-sea mining. He argues that the industry as a whole disregards international law and that exploiting the seafloor will harm fisheries and trample upon the rights of Pacific Islanders who consider the sea as sacred. (The Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands have raised such concerns in opposing Trump administration plans to open the waters there to mining.) He also believes that some of the experts involved in Japan’s project “are not really taking seriously the risks to the environment and how irreversible it may be.”

Even some government officials have expressed concern. Yoshihito Doi of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy has said Japan should mine only “if we can establish a robust system that properly takes environmental impacts into account.” 

cobalt, nickel and manganese." data-caption="A geologist inspects a bucket of polymetallic nodules, misshapen black globes encrusted with metals like cobalt, nickel, and manganese, collected by the research vessel MV Anuanua Moana from near the Cook Islands.
A geologist inspects a bucket of polymetallic nodules, misshapen black globes encrusted with metals like cobalt, nickel, and manganese, collected by the research vessel MV Anuanua Moana from near the Cook Islands.
William West / AFP via Getty Images

It remains unclear what exactly is unfolding beneath the waves during this current test, but based upon his experience working with the Japanese government on similar research, Washburn said the top priority will be assessing whether the technology works. Researchers also will monitor how much material the system can hold and if the machinery can keep the sea mud contained without releasing a massive sediment plume on the seafloor or in the water column. 

If Japan can successfully deploy a 6,000-meter pipe that can suck up 35 metric tons of mud under extreme pressure — about 8,700 pounds per square inch, or 600 times the pressure at sea level — government officials say a broader trial, which may include polymetallic nodules, could begin in February 2027. 

One longer-term goal is to develop what’s called “hybrid mining.” Because deep-sea polymetallic nodules sit atop the rare-earth mud around Minamitorishima Island, researchers are exploring whether both could be collected and separated in a single operation.

Kamisuna said Japan faces another challenge: The energy needed to acquire and refine a stockpile. “If we want to create a sufficient reserve for rare earth [minerals], either using domestic or export, a large amount of electricity is required,” he said. “And the question is, What are we going to use, liquified natural gas or coal? What is the environmental cost?”

Using more environmentally friendly methods of extraction and processing can be expensive, he said — which is one reason many countries turn to China as a cheaper option. 

For now, Japan’s deep-sea mining experiment seems to have drawn little public opposition at home, unlike in the United States and Australia where environmental activists and Indigenous communities have pushed back against such operations, particularly around the Pacific Islands. In the meantime, the country’s test moves forward, even as the implications of success, and questions about its long-term impact, remain unresolved.

“We are not prepared,” Tanaka said. “My personal take is that by the time we are ready, when the technology and the science is set, I really do not think there would be a demand for it.” 

toolTips('.classtoolTips2','A group of 17 soft gray metals including lanthanides, scandium, and yttrium, so-called rare earths form key parts of the magnets in wind turbines and are used in high-tech products ranging from consumer electronics to defense satellites.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A lightweight, silvery-white alkali metal with properties that allow it to store large amounts of energy. Lithium is a key component of many batteries, including those that store renewable energy and power electric vehicles.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips9','A conductive and heat-resistant metal that forms a key part of many battery cathodes, which allow electric charges to flow. It is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power many EVs as well as solar energy systems and wind turbine components.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips10','A scarce blue metal that helps battery cathodes store large amounts of energy without overheating or collapsing. It is a key component of lithium-ion batteries. ');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Japan’s unprecedented project could test the limits of deep-sea mining on Feb 3, 2026.

I recently ate a pig that’s alive and well at a sanctuary in upstate New York. Her name is Dawn, and she donated a bit of fat, which a company called Mission Barns grows in bioreactors, then blends with plant-based ingredients to create pork products (like the meatballs above) that taste darn near like the real thing. Its “cultivated” offerings join a herd of alternative meats — including those from mainstays like Impossible Foods and Eat Just — that are challenging the traditional livestock industry, which uses immense swaths of land and spews staggering quantities of greenhouse gas emissions.

In his new book Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food — and Our Future, Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of the Good Food Institute, catalogs the extraordinary costs of conventional meat production and the vast potential for alternative culinary technologies. Grist sat down with Friedrich to talk about the progress, challenges, and potential of the fledgling industry. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q. It’d be great to get a rundown on — if you’ll pardon the pun — your beef with meat.

A. Conventional meat production has significant external costs. In 2006, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a more-than-400-page report called Livestock’s Long Shadow. It said that animal-product production is responsible for all of the most serious environmental harms at every scale, from local to global. It looked at deforestation, climate change, air pollution, water pollution, water depletion, loss of biodiversity, and said that the inefficiency and extra stages of production involved in producing animal products made meat, dairy, and eggs a significant contributor to all of those, including being the number one contributor to deforestation.

All of those environmental consequences have gotten worse. If it takes 9 calories of feed to get 1 calorie of chicken, or 10 or more calories of feed to get a calorie of farmed fish or pork, and even more calories to get a calorie from a ruminant animal — a cow or a sheep or a goat — that’s an inherent inefficiency that really is 800 percent food waste, or more. All of the inefficiency adds up, and that’s why the latest numbers are that roughly 20 percent of climate emissions are attributable to animal agriculture. 

Q. We’re at an interesting point in which the technology has gotten extremely advanced when it comes to replicating what is grown in an animal in a field somewhere. What are the options for alternative meats? 

A. It’s very much similar to how we think about renewable energy or electric vehicles. There is a recognition that the world is going to consume more energy, the world is going to drive more miles. The world is also going to eat more meat. In the last 25 years, meat production is up about 65 percent. It will probably be up something like 65 percent again through 2050, and that means all of the external costs of meat production continue to get worse.

Just like if you’re talking about energy, we need an all-of-the-above strategy. So we want everything from more energy-efficient light bulbs to houses, but we do need renewable energy as one of the tools in the toolkit. Here, the solution is to figure out how we create plant-based meat that is indistinguishable and less expensive, and how we grow actual animal meat in factories rather than on live animals. 

Q. You talk in the book about a number of ways this can be incentivized, though there are many states that have already done things like ban cultivated meat. What could be done in these early days of alt meats that could accelerate both the science and the adoption?

A. One very encouraging aspect of a shift in the direction of plant-based meat and cultivated meat is that because they are so much more efficient, there is a massive profit motive. And there is also a massive food-security motive for countries like China, Japan, and Korea that have significant food self-sufficiency concerns. Countries that cannot feed themselves recognize that that is a significant national security threat and are highly motivated to figure out how to feed themselves. These countries recognize that if they can produce meat with a fraction of the inputs required to produce animal-based meat, that will be a boon to their national security. And in the United States, we’re also seeing bipartisan support for alternative proteins for economic competitiveness reasons.

Q. One challenge now is that there’s a backlash in the United States against ultra-processed foods. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been struggling financially lately, perhaps as part of that. Is that a surmountable challenge for the industry?

A. The first thing to say is that the plant-based meats are significantly healthier than what they are replacing. All of the plant-based meats that consumers like best, relative to animal-based meat, have less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, more fiber, and more protein. All of the plant-based meats are significantly less calorically dense than the animal-based meat they’re replacing. The indictment against ultra-processed foods works, generally speaking, as shorthand for products that are low in fiber, calorically dense, high in fat, high in sugar. But comparing plant-based meat to Doritos and Coca-Cola doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are some questions around some of the other ultra-processed foods, but the science is clear that the meat and dairy alternatives do not lead to bad health outcomes.

Q. You make the point in the book that these companies should collaborate with the traditional meat industry, reforming the industry instead of replacing it. Why? 

A. The goal of the meat industry is to produce high-quality protein profitably. Figuring out how to produce that same end product far more efficiently is going to be extremely profitable for the companies and countries that lean in. If you’re sort of analogizing to photography, nobody wants to be Kodak. Everybody wants to be Canon, and to seize the opportunity rather than to pretend it doesn’t exist.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why the future of meat production is in vats, not farms on Feb 3, 2026.

Water for sale: from the Thames to the Amazon Channel News brendan 3rd February 2026 Teaser Media

The Queensland Government has today approved expansion of a coal mine that was found by the Queensland Land Court to have failed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, with the decision condemned by community group Lock the Gate.

SECOND URANIUM EXPLORATION PROJECT THREATENS CRAVEN CANYON A Canadian company has applied for a second time to explore for radioactive uranium at Craven Canyon in the southern Black Hills. This project is named the October Jinx Project, which is on federal land. It is part of the larger Chord Project. The company is named Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation … Continue reading CALL TO ACTION: COMMENTS NEEDED TO PROTECT CRAVEN CANYON

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a request for information (RFI) inviting states to express interest in hosting so-called “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses” to bolster the domestic nuclear value chain.

The initiative, launched on Jan. 28, is part of the Department’s efforts to modernize the nation’s full nuclear fuel cycle and strengthen America’s leadership in advanced nuclear energy.

The RFI marks “the first step towards potentially establishing voluntary federal-state partnerships designed to advance regional economic growth, enhance national energy security, and build a coherent, end-to-end nuclear energy strategy for the country,” DOE said in a statement.

“Unleashing the next American nuclear renaissance will drive innovation, fuel economic growth and create good-paying American jobs while delivering the affordable, reliable and secure energy America needs to power its future,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated in a news release.

“Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses give us the opportunity to work directly with states on regional priorities that support President Trump’s vision to revitalize America’s nuclear base,” he added.

The proposed campuses could support activities across the full nuclear fuel lifecycle, including fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing used nuclear fuel and disposition of waste. Depending on state priorities and regional capabilities, the sites could also host advanced reactor deployment, power generation, advanced manufacturing and co-located data centers.

As part of the RFI submission, states must provide clear statements of interest and constructive feedback on the structure of the Innovation Campuses. The submissions should outline state priorities—such as workforce development, infrastructure investment, economic diversification or technology leadership— and describe the scope of activities the state envisions hosting, DOE said.

States are also encouraged to identify the funding structures, risk-sharing approaches, incentives and federal partnerships required to successfully establish and sustain a full-cycle Innovation Campus, it added.

Responses to the RFI are requested by April 1, 2026. More information is here.

Proposals to build coal-fired plants in China reached a record high in 2025, finds a new study.

The report, released by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM), says that, in 2025, developers submitted new or reactivated proposals to build a total of 161 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power plants.

The new proposals come even as China’s buildout of renewable energy pushed down coal-power generation and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2025, meaning many coal plants are already running at just half of their maximum capacity.

The co-authors argue that while clean-energy growth may limit emissions from coal power in the short term, the surge in proposals could lock in new coal assets, “weaken…incentives” for power-system reform and help keep coal capacity online in spite of China’s climate goals. 

The high rate of new proposals, the study says, likely reflects a “rush by the coal industry stakeholders” to develop projects before an expected tightening of climate policy in the next five years.

In addition, “misaligned” payment mechanisms are encouraging developers to propose large-scale coal units, which – if developed – could impact the transition of the coal sector from playing the central role in electricity generation to flexibly supporting a system built on clean power.

Significant additions pushing down running hours

The report finds that the amount of new coal-fired power proposals by Chinese developers, including reactivated applications, hit a new peak in 2025, at 161GW. This is equal to 13% of the coal capacity currently online in China.

The country is continuing to add significant coal-power capacity, with a record 95GW added to the grid last year and another 291GW in the pipeline – meaning units that have been proposed, are actively under construction or have already been permitted.

Moreover, around two-thirds of coal-power capacity proposed in China since 2014 has either been commissioned – meaning it has been completed and started operating – or remains in the pipeline, Christine Shearer, report co-author and research analyst at thinktank Global Energy Monitor, tells Carbon Brief.

She adds that this is the “reverse of what we see outside China, where roughly two-thirds of proposed coal capacity never makes it to construction”.

Coal remains a significant part of China’s power mix, making the nation’s electricity sector one of the world’s largest emitters. Indeed, the power sector emitted more than 5.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) in 2024 – meaning that if it were its own country, it would have the highest emissions of any country except China itself.

But emissions from the power sector have been flat or falling since March 2024, according to analysis for Carbon Brief by CREA lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta.  

This is largely due to China’s rapid installation of renewable power, which is covering nearly all of new electricity demand and pushing coal generation into decline in 2025. 

Some parts of the coal-power pipeline are reflecting this shift. In 2025, construction began on 83GW of new coal capacity – down from 98GW in 2024. 

In addition, new permitting fell to a four-year low, at 45GW, which could point to tighter controls on coal-plant approvals in the future, says the report.

The chart below shows the amount of new coal-power capacity being proposed in China each year, in GW. 

Amount of new coal-power capacity being proposed in China each year, GW, 2015-2025. Source: The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Global Energy Monitor.

The shift from new power demand being met by coal to being met by renewable energy means any “additional coal power capacity would face structurally low utilisation”, the report says, referring to the number of hours that plants are able to operate each year.

This reduces coal-plant earnings needed to cover the cost of investment and makes instances of “stranded [coal] assets and compensation pressures” more likely. 

A previous analysis for Carbon Brief finds that “larger additions of coal capacity are often followed by falling utilisation” – meaning that the construction of new coal plants does not necessarily increase emissions.

Utilisation rates for coal-fired power plants have hovered around 51% since 2025, according to the CREA and GEM report.

Shearer argues that while low utilisation rates would “dampen the immediate impact on annual CO2 emissions”, in the long-term the buildout “locks capital into fossil fuels” and “weakens incentives to build the cleaner forms of flexibility” needed for a renewables-centred system.

Low utilisation has also not led to coal plant capacity being retired in any notable way, the report notes, with generators instead supported by the coal “capacity payment” mechanism and extending the life of older units.

Delayed retirement of older coal plants causes “persistent overcapacity” and adds to calls for further compensation and policy support, the report says.

Coal generation has “no room to expand” under China’s international climate pledge for 2030, it adds, with utilisation rates for coal units likely to fall to 42% if renewables continue to meet all additional demand and if all of the plants currently under construction or permitted are brought online.

Crunch-time for coal

The surge in new proposals reflects a “rush” by the coal industry to ensure their projects are approved before the policy environment tightens, according to the report.

China is expected to introduce absolute emissions targets over the next five years. While these are expected to be aspirational for the first five years – alongside binding targets for carbon intensity, the emissions per unit of GDP – from 2030 they will be binding.

The current five-year period until 2030 will also likely see most of China’s energy-intensive industries pulled into the scope of its national carbon market. 

In the power sector, government officials have said that coal is expected to shift from playing a major role in power supply to supporting “flexibility” operations.

This would require coal plants to shift between varying load levels and respond quickly to changes in demand and other system needs.

However, the report finds, the approvals for coal power “continue to reflect expectations of high operating hours”, instead of flexible operations. 

For many of these proposals, planned annual utilisation was stated to be more than 4,800 hours, or 55% of hours in the year. This is greater than the 4,685 utilisation hours (53%) logged in 2023, the year in which the most coal power was generated over the past decade, according to data shared by the report authors with Carbon Brief.

In addition, the report says that many of the new coal-power proposals in 2025 were for “large-scale units”, each representing at least 1GW of power, as shown in the figure below. 

Number of coal-fired power units newly proposed in 2025, grouped by power generation capacity of the unit. Source: the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Global Energy Monitor.

These larger units are designed for “stable, continuous operation” and are “poorly suited to the type of flexibility increasingly required in a power system dominated by wind and solar”, says the report.

This suggests that “project developers still anticipated base-load style operation”, it adds, “sitting uneasily” with the fact of higher clean-energy generation and falling coal plant utilisation.

Reliance on sales and subsidies

This persistence in developing large-scale units could be explained by the financial incentives that govern the coal-power industry.

Coal power plants are cheap to build but risk low profits and high costs, with many current operators already facing losses at recent utilisation rates.

In 2024, the government established a capacity payment mechanism for coal-fired power plants. This mechanism rewards developers for adding “seldom-utilised, backup” capacity to the grid. 

These capacity payments, as well as regulated pricing and implicit government backing “can make plants viable on paper even if utilisation and operating margins are weak”, Shearer tells Carbon Brief, which may explain the continued appetite for new coal from developers.

More than 100bn yuan ($14bn) in capacity payments were made to coal plants in 2024, although it has not yet had a discernable impact on utilisation.

Large-scale units, the report says, are “particularly well positioned” to benefit from the policy, as it rewards maximising capacity and does not favour plants that are more suited for flexible operations.

(The Chinese government recently announced plans to adjust the mechanism, confirming that in some cases capacity payments could be more than the initial expected threshold of 50% of a benchmark coal plant’s total fixed costs.)

Meanwhile, the report adds that coal-fired power plants continue to earn most of their revenue from selling electricity, with only 5% of total income coming from capacity payments. 

As such, these “misaligned incentives” encourage producing power and installing significant new capacity, despite the government’s aim to shift coal to a supporting role in the system. 

Shearer tells Carbon Brief that a better approach to flexibility would be to “adopt technology-neutral flexibility standards”, rather than focusing on “flexible coal”, which would mean coal would have to “compete directly with storage, demand response, grid upgrades and other clean options”. She adds: 

“The risk of coal-specific flexibility policies is that they lock in capacity rather than solve the underlying system need.”

分析：清洁能源2025年为中国GDP增长贡献超过三分之一

China energy

|

05.02.26

Analysis: Clean energy drove more than a third of China’s GDP growth in 2025

China energy

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05.02.26

Explainer: Why gas plays a minimal role in China’s climate strategy

China energy

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22.01.26

Experts: What to expect from China on energy and climate action in 2026

China energy

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16.01.26

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The post ‘Rush’ for new coal in China hits record high in 2025 as climate deadline looms appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Residents from NSW’s major coal-producing regions have called on NSW Minister for Natural Resources Courtney Houssos for stronger support, ahead of parliamentary debate on the government’s Future Jobs and Investment Bill 2025.

2025 marked a structural shift in clean energy and community development finance. Federal programs had been providing or promising flexible capital to make clean energy projects less risky for lenders and investors. Many of those programs are now gone. While that has upended workplans and made financing harder, it has not reduced demand nor commitment for clean energy in communities.

Against this backdrop, RMI convened 70 practitioners in late 2025 from green banks, community lenders, regional and commercial banks, and impact investors to surface the most pressing challenges and priorities for 2026. The message was clear: organizations are moving forward, even in tougher terrain. Participants remain motivated and are actively seeking solutions to ensure communities have access to resilient sources of capital for clean energy projects when federal dollars aren’t available.

Across conversations, one familiar but unresolved challenge rose to the top: many community clean energy projects can work on paper, but they don’t fit mainstream capital’s “credit box” — the criteria banks and investors use to decide what they will fund, including cash flow predictability, counterparty credit, and deal size and structure. This misalignment is most acute for smaller deal sizes, in new markets, or with unfamiliar or credit-constrained counterparties.

Federal programs were designed to help bridge these gaps by providing flexible capital that could absorb risk and fragmentation. With that support receding, the work ahead requires sharper execution: clearer roles, stronger coordination, and financing approaches that help projects fit within the credit box without relying on perpetual subsidy.

The convening brought to light four priorities for 2026:

• Fix affordability gap: Strengthen concessional balance sheets for institutions that can absorb cash flow risk and provide products that improve project economics for low-income and underserved customers.
• Address risk perception gap: Map and standardize credit enhancements to build investor confidence and move from bespoke risk mitigation to scalable structures.
• Close market access gap: Identify asset classes ready for standardization and aggregation, and support warehousing to connect small or fragmented assets to secondary markets.
• Resolve ecosystem capacity constraints: Invest in subnational financing ecosystems that can turn localized solutions into investable markets by diagnosing constraints, enabling institutional specialization, and strengthening coordination across the finance stack.

Why Community Clean Energy Projects Don’t Fit Traditional Lending Models

Most climate finance work, at its core, is about moving assets into the credit box. Trying to convince lenders and investors to abandon their risk-return requirements is a dead end; the work is in identifying and addressing the specific frictions that keep otherwise viable projects from being financed.

In practice, clean energy assets tend to fall outside the credit box for one or more of three reasons.

The first is an affordability gap. This is a failure of economic viability where projects don’t generate sufficient or stable cash flows at price points end users can afford, failing the credit box’s cash-flow and repayment assumptions. Even when technologies are cost-effective at a system level, the revenue model breaks at the household, small business, or community level, particularly in low-income or underserved markets. This is fundamentally a cash-flow problem, not a technology or performance risk issue.

The second is a risk perception gap, where assets may cash flow on paper, but investors are uncomfortable with real or perceived risks — including performance uncertainty, counterparty credit quality, or regulatory and policy exposure — and they demand protections accordingly. Unfamiliar risks are frequently overweighted, keeping otherwise viable projects sidelined because investors aren’t confident that assets will perform as advertised.

The third is a market access gap, where assets can’t reach investors who want to buy them. Even when projects perform well individually, they may be too small, bespoke, or scattered to meet investors’ size and standardization needs. Because each deal is different, lenders and investors must spend significant time and money to review, structure, monitor, and service them, and those costs can outweigh the returns. This is made worse by inconsistent deal flow, limited performance track records, and too few actors positioned to hold projects on their balance sheets long enough to enable bundling them, building scale, and bringing them to larger, more liquid secondary markets.

The priorities for 2026 that surfaced in our convening flow from these gaps.

Priorities for 2026 to Align Projects with Investor Requirements Fix affordability gap: address the economics

When affordability is the binding constraint, the solution needs to improve what customers can actually pay, not shift risk around the capital stack. Tools like guarantees protect lenders after default, but they don’t reduce the likelihood of default.

Affordability tools improve project economics. On-bill mechanisms make repayment easier and more reliable by tying payments to utility bills and expected savings. Interest rate buydowns lower monthly payments, improving borrower cash flow. Lease structures can lower upfront costs or shift performance and maintenance risk away from customers. Technology bundling can also lower costs in certain instances, such as when pairing efficient heat pump upgrades with rooftop solar results in more affordable electricity.

2026 priority: Strengthen concessional balance sheets for institutions that directly address affordability, such as green banks and community lenders, so they can continue serving customers with affordable, accessible financing. Address risk perception gap: reallocate or clarify risk

Even when cash flows are adequate, investors may hesitate if they don’t trust the counterparty or don’t fully understand performance risks. This is where credit enhancement tools are most effective. Guarantees can protect against downside outcomes, especially for newer or unfamiliar asset types. Insurance can transfer specific, well-defined risks. Loan loss reserves can absorb expected losses when defaults are possible but limited.

Standardization helps here, too. Consistent underwriting, contracts, and performance data help make unfamiliar risks clearer, more comparable, and easier to price.

Today, credit enhancement tools are often highly customized and designed deal-by-deal. While helpful in specific cases, this fragmentation makes it harder to attract larger pools of capital.

2026 priority: Map and standardize existing credit enhancements to move from deal-by-deal risk support toward structures that enable scale and attract larger pools of capital. Close market access gap: build liquidity pathways

Even well-performing assets can’t scale if they can’t reach liquidity. Moving capital at scale requires a sequence of steps: first, standardizing rules, contracts, and data where appropriate; then, aggregating assets through warehousing or pooling; and finally, accessing secondary markets.

Intermediaries play a critical role in this process. Bond banks and other centralizing entities or capital markets-facing intermediaries can turn small or fragmented projects into investable portfolios or securities. They lower the cost of capital by pooling assets and making it easier to sell or refinance assets once they reach scale.

Credit enhancements may be required at the point of sale to meet investor requirements. But the constraints show up earlier — in how assets are originated, standardized, aggregated, and held. Credit enhancements can’t substitute for those steps.

2026 priority: Identify which asset classes are ready for standardization and aggregation and clarify which institutions can warehouse and centralize assets to connect them to secondary markets. Resolve ecosystem capacity constraints: strengthen subnational financing ecosystems

Ecosystem and institutional capacity constraints determine whether the solutions to the three gaps described above can be developed and applied effectively.

Subnational financing ecosystems could be a powerful forum for coordinating the problem-solving and action needed in the years ahead. With federal pullback — and because conditions vary widely by place — these ecosystems are where solutions to the three gaps must ultimately be executed.

In practice, however, subnational financing ecosystems are themselves constrained because many places lack institutional capacity, functional coverage, and coordination to deploy solutions effectively.

This shows up today in a few ways. In many places, institutions are too small or undercapitalized to operate at scale; key entities that should play critical ecosystem functions are missing or underleveraged; and coordination remains weak — both among local actors and between local markets and the secondary capital markets they depend on.

Subnational financing ecosystems can become engines for action across the other three priorities outlined above, but only if underlying capacity constraints are addressed through investment in three essential priorities.

1. Diagnosis and learning: identifying which constraints are binding for specific assets and communities, testing solutions, and building a place-based track record over time.
2. Role clarity and coordination: enabling institutions to focus on what they do best and what the market needs — whether customer-facing origination and affordability, credit enhancement, or warehousing, aggregation, and capital markets access — rather than duplicating every function everywhere and competing for the same limited pools of concessional capital. Scaling the right interventions depends on clear, differentiated roles, sufficient institutional capacity, and effective coordination mechanisms.
3. Capital translation: connecting local lending activity to national and institutional capital markets by converting fragmented assets into standardized, investable portfolios and turning local proof points into models that can scale.

2026 priority: Convene subnational financing ecosystems to build ecosystem and institutional capacity by diagnosing binding constraints, clarifying specialized roles, and connecting local lending activity to secondary and institutional capital markets. Building the Systems Community Clean Energy Finance Needs

To overcome longstanding challenges in affordability, risk perception, and market access, the next phase of community clean energy finance must focus on moving assets into mainstream capital’s credit box at scale without subsidy. That means building subnational systems that can do this work and endure as federal support ebbs and flows.

In practice, this comes down to building financing systems that make projects affordable for customers, reducing perceived risk for investors, and creating clear pathways to scale. Rather than relying on one-off tools, the emphasis shifts to how these elements work together consistently across markets.

Delivering on these priorities will require capital sources better suited to long-term market building — and, critically, will create the conditions for more of that capital to participate. Local deposits can anchor community lenders and green banks focused on affordability and origination. Centralizing entities can manage complexity and timing mismatches, aggregate assets and demand, and connect local lending activity to secondary markets and pooled issuance platforms. Institutional investors and bond buyers can then provide the liquidity needed to recycle capital and scale what works.

Progress in addressing binding constraints across affordability, risk, market access, and subnational capacity is connected and reinforcing. The result is a financing system that can support community clean energy investment at scale across regions and regardless of the availability of federal support.

The post Financing Community Clean Energy Projects in 2026 appeared first on RMI.

As President Trump and Congress return today to consider government funding, Common Cause is welcoming elected leaders back with a simple message on a mobile billboard roaming Washington, D.C.: Fire Kristi Noem.

Last week, Common Cause launched a campaign to “Fire Kristi Noem” and hold DHS accountable after federal agents killed a second Minnesotan in 2026, Alex Pretti. Since then, the watchdog group’s campaign has gathered nearly a hundred thousand signatures, launched digital ads, and now has taken its people-powered message to the streets of Washington, D.C., with a mobile billboard. The billboard will be present from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. today around the White House, Congress, and the Secretary’s office near Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling.

“DHS under Kristi Noem has become dangerously lawless and deadly, and the buck stops with her,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause President and CEO. “Whether she resigns or the president fires her, America doesn’t need another day with Noem as DHS secretary. We plan to drive the people’s message past the White House, Congress, and even Kristi Noem’s office until our demands are met.”

British Columbia will begin processing mineral-exploration permit applications within 40 to 140 days starting April 1, a move aimed at keeping investment flowing after exploration spending hit a record C$751 million ($550 million) in 2025.

The province is backing the change with C$3 million in new funding, including C$1 million to add permitting capacity and $2 million to boost the Mineral Claims Consultation Framework, which the industry has criticized as a bottleneck. Files that miss the new service standard will be escalated to the chief permitting officer for a decision within 14 days, the government said.

“These timelines, backed by new investment, respond to industry feedback,” Mining and Critical Minerals Minister Jagrup Brar told The Northern Miner last week during the AME Roundup in Vancouver. The province is to maintain environmental standards and consultation with First Nations while giving prospectors and investors more certainty, the minister said.

Brar pointed to recent approvals as evidence the province can move projects faster, including Skeena Gold and Silver’s (TSX, NYSE: SKE) $713-million Eskay Creek gold-silver restart under a consent-based Section 7 process with Tahltan Central Government, and permit amendments for Centerra Gold’s (TSX: CG; NYSE: CGAU) Gold’s Mt. Milligan expansion that could extend the mine to 2035 with up to C$400 million in capital spending.

Watch below the full interview with The Northern Miner’s Western Editor, Henry Lazenby:

Today, a coalition of 30+ organizations and AI experts released a new letter warning of the potential national security implications of the Pentagon’s use of Elon Musk’s Grok. The letter, signed by organizations including Public Citizen, Indivisible, the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP), UltraViolet and others, calls on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to decommission the unsafe and untested technology.

Earlier letters in August and October of 2025 similarly warned OMB against federal deployment of the AI technology and called for suspension of its use. Earlier this month, Grok was embroiled in scandal after flooding Musk’s X with “nudified” and other sexualized images of women and girls, which has led to the launch of an investigation by the European Commission.

“AI experts and consumer groups have been sounding the alarm on Grok’s mounting safety concerns, citing it as unstable. Allowing Grok into the federal government was reckless and now that it has access to classified documents, the situation is infinitely more dire,” said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen. “The next Grok failure might not involve nudified images of women, it could compromise national security.”

In addition to immediately suspending the federal deployment of Grok, the letter demands the following actions be taken:

• Initiate a formal investigation into Grok’s safety failures and the procurement and oversight processes that permitted its federal deployment, including whether required risk assessments, mitigation measures, and compliance determinations were conducted and appropriately reviewed.
• Publicly clarify whether Grok has been evaluated for compliance with Executive Order 14319’s truth-seeking and neutrality requirements and whether it was determined to meet OMB’s risk mitigation standards.
• Require disclosure of all safety testing, red-teaming results, and risk assessments conducted on Grok as a condition of any continued consideration for federal use.
• Account for the legal basis on which Grok remains available to federal agencies despite documented violations of OMB’s binding guidance.

The full letter is available to view on the Public Citizen website. For more information, or to speak with an expert, contact eleach@citizen.org.

Today, the Trump administration lost yet another legal battle in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. This is the fifth and final offshore wind project that has successfully challenged the administration’s stop-work order.

In December—three days before Christmas—Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior halted five offshore wind projects that were all more than 40 percent complete. Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts was nearly 95 percent finished and already delivering power to the grid. Trump’s orders halted fully-vetted, billion-dollar projects and sent thousands of workers home at a time when construction jobs were scarce and energy demand was nearing its peak. Since then, all five stop-work orders have been challenged in court, and in all five times, the courts have ruled in favor of the offshore wind projects.

“The unilateral court victories are evidence of what we’ve known all along—Donald Trump has it out for offshore wind, but we aren’t giving up without a fight. Communities deserve a cleaner, cheaper, healthier future, and offshore wind will help us get there,” said Sierra Club Senior Advisor Nancy Pyne. “Despite the roadblocks Donald Trump has tried to throw up in an effort to bolster dirty fossil fuels, offshore wind will prevail. We will continue to call for responsible and equitable offshore wind from coast to coast, as we fight for an affordable and reliable clean energy future for all.”

“We are glad to see Sunrise Wind’s 800 workers, made up largely of local New Yorkers, get back to work on this critical project,” added Allyson Samuell, Sierra Club Senior Campaign Representative in New York. “Once constructed, Sunrise Wind will supply 600,000 local homes with affordable, reliable, renewable energy – this power is super needed and especially important during extreme cold snaps and winter storms like Storm Fern. Here in New York, South Fork has proven offshore wind works, now is the time to see Sunrise, and Empire Wind, come online too.”

Minnesota state and national environmental groups filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration’s decision to exempt the nation’s taconite iron ore processing facilities from newly strengthened Environmental Protection Agency limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutant emissions. The groups say the waiver is yet another example of the Trump administration’s overreach that undermines the country’s clean air safeguards.

The taconite industry contributes approximately half of the mercury emissions from all sources in Minnesota.

“As home to the majority of these facilities, Minnesota is particularly vulnerable to mercury pollution from taconite facilities. By carving out special exemptions for taconite plants, the Trump administration is effectively sacrificing our waters, our wild rice, and our children’s health so companies can keep emitting mercury into the air,” said Ashlynn Kendzior of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “That violates the law and it harms our communities, and we are going to court to stop it.”

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in fish and poses particular risks to those who are pregnant, to fetuses, and to young children. Many communities in northern Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where taconite facilities are concentrated rely on fish as a traditional food source, making them especially vulnerable to mercury contamination. State and federal health agencies have issued fish consumption advisories across Minnesota waters due in part to airborne mercury deposition.

“These exemptions put children, pregnant people, and communities at greater risk from mercury and other toxic air pollution so taconite facilities owned by well-resourced companies can keep delaying pollution controls,” says Shampa Panda-Bryant, senior attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “Communities have fought for decades for protections that President Trump is unlawfully trying to undo with the stroke of his pen, and once again putting profit and pollution over people.”

The lawsuit, filed by the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and NRDC, in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeks to overturn a July 17, 2025 presidential proclamation that granted a two-year exemption from the EPA’s 2024 Taconite Iron Ore Processing air toxics rule. During the exemption period, these facilities are allowed to continue operating without federal standards for mercury emissions for taconite processing facilities and avoid new requirements to curb emissions of mercury, hydrochloric acid, and hydrofluoric acid, pollutants linked to brain damage in children, heart and lung disease, and premature death.

EPA’s 2024 taconite rule established, after years of advocacy by impacted communities, the first nationwide limits on mercury from taconite iron ore processing plants and tightened standards for acid gases like hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid. The agency found that these standards would significantly reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants from taconite plants in the United States.

By KAY MATTHEWS

The recent fundraising newsletter from Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS) announced that Executive Director Joni Arends will soon be retiring. Joni has been the backbone of CCNS since its inception 37 years ago, an antinuclear activist since the early days of protesting WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant`), and a partner with many advocacy and Indigenous groups such as Tewa Women United, Tularosa Basin Downwinders, Communities for Clean Water, and Honor our Pueblo Existence (HOPE). I served on the CCNS board in the 2010s and have watched with wonder, from both near and far, Joni’s ability to dive deep into Los Alamos National Laboratory’s complicated reports, statistics, and bureaucratic bullshit to try to hold the Lab accountable for the build-up of nuclear weapons and the resulting legacy waste that has poisoned workers and our communities. It’s a stressful, and often thankless job, and while Joni, more than anyone else I can think of, deserves a restful retirement, it’s going to be difficult finding someone to take her place.

But the fundraising newsletter says that there are “qualified young candidates” ready to take the helm at CCNS. Joni is working hard to make sure CCNS files and procedures are transparent and readily available to potential employees. Please donate, if you can, to help Joni transition to a new life and fund those willing to step up and keep CCNS alive. You can donate online at nuclearactive.org.

There’s still a lot going on that requires her attention now. Public hearings on LANL’s Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility (RLWTF) are scheduled for this March or April. The RLWTF is a key support facility for the proposed expanded pit production at LANL. It’s located across the street from the Plutonium Facility (PF-4) and receives radioactive, toxic, and hazardous liquids for treatment from PF-4 and other plutonium facilities through underground pipes and by truck. However, RLWTF remains improperly permitted by the New Mexico Water Quality Act instead of the more protective and legally required New Mexico Hazardous Waste Act (HWA). The HWA would regulate the pipes and tanks that handle, treat, and store contaminated liquids.

CCNS and HOPE challenged the RLWTF permit in 2023. The New Mexico Water Control Commission (WQCC) challenged CCNS and HOPE (along with Triad National Security, LANL’s contractor), claiming they didn’t have standing, but the New Mexico Court of Appeals overturned that decision. Then Triad challenged their standing again in the New Mexico Supreme Court. CCNS and HOPE are now waiting to see if the court will consider the standing case.

 Other projects for 2026 include designing a curriculum for northern New Mexico youth to participate in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) hearings and decisions. The release of the draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Plutonium Pit Production (PEIS) at LANL is upcoming, and CCNS board member, Myrriah Goméz (Associate Professor, Honors College, UNM) will create a PEIS nuclear literacy and response program for Nuevomexicano communities.

First and foremost, on the CCNS website, is a call to action. The last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia will expire on Wednesday, February 4th. Without this treaty, there will be nothing stopping a new, dangerous, and wasteful nuclear arms race.  Now is the time to demand that both countries agree to Save New START.

Defuse Nuclear War, a coalition of more than 200 organizations dedicated to reducing the risk of nuclear war, has created a great toolkit to use.  It contains resources for one-on-one conversations, key messages, great graphics, social media posts, letters to the editor, and op-eds calling on the United States and Russia to preserve the limits established by a treaty. https://defusenuclearwar.org/ and https://defusenuclearwar.org/save-new-start/

Defuse Nuclear War has a sample letter to the editor for you to use with a focus on sharing local issues and concerns. Please adjust as needed for your community. https://defusenuclearwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/New-START-toolkit.pdf, see p. 4.

Why do US taxpayers now own millions of shares in mining companies? Elected leaders from both the US Senate and House of Representatives want to know, including how these investments affect taxpayers and whether or not they avoid unnecessary risks and conflicts of interest.

Today, a coalition of Ranking Members from the House Oversight and Investigations, Natural Resources and Senate Budget and Energy and Natural Resources Committees sent separate letters to the Administration and to seven mining and mineral processing companies demanding documents and answers to their questions. 

The Trump Administration is spending public money to take ownership stakes in mining companies in a way that allows officials to play favorites behind closed doors, smacks of conflicts of interest, and raises risks that oversight and enforcement will take a back seat to profit. Taxpayer dollars should go toward projects that benefit the American people, not toward enriching a few chosen corporate executives. 

The Congressional oversight letters request responses by February 26 from Secretaries Hegseth, Lutnick, Wright, and Burgum related to the Federal Government’s purchase of shares in Trilogy Metals, Lithium Americas, MP Materials, Vulcan Elements, ReElements Technologies, Korea Zinc, and USA Rare Earth (USAR). The investments in Trilogy Metals, LithiumAmericas, and MP Materials all follow a recent pattern where the Administration leverages federal grants in order to take equity stakes in mining companies. Mining is already a “boom and bust” business that operates on tight margins. Like many investments, these pose some risk of loss. 

One potential risk is over-supply from the taxpayer subsidies fueling this current “boom.” In November 2025, while signing a minerals deal with Australia, President Trump said, “In about a year from now we’ll have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them. They’ll be worth about $2.” Historic and recent volatility in metals commodities markets—like lithium’s recent crash—suggests the President could be right. 

Congress magnified this risk with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Subsidies in that Act include nearly $13 billion in direct Defense Production Act grants and approximately $350 billion in Department of Energy financing available for mines and other projects. Trilogy Metals, LithiumAmericas, and MP Materials, Vulcan Elements, ReElements Technologies, Korea Zinc, and USAR each received public financing through programs authorized or re-authorized under that statute. 

Some of this taxpayer-subsidized minerals boom may potentially fund fairly financially risky projects. Usually, publicly traded mining companies must attract investors by providing an independent study showing their project is feasible—that it can make money. Yet, the Trump Administration’s Executive Order 14241, “Immediate Measures to Ensure American Mineral Production,” waived this requirement for mines where American tax dollars are invested. Without a feasibility study, the public risks American tax dollars flowing toward speculative projects that may never materialize. 

In addition to the risks of over-supply and speculation, public ownership of mining projects creates a conflict of interest because the government is responsible for regulating the projects it is investing in. For example, the Trump administration bought 10% of Trilogy Metals, a company with no mine and almost no access to the site. To build and operate a mine, Trilogy Metals needs the Federal Government to permit the controversial 211-mile Ambler Road through 26 miles of Alaska’s Gates of the Arctic National Park, putting wildlife, public lands, and Alaskan subsistence communities at risk. And even with these permits, the project still faces significant legal and practical obstacles. 

The American public now owns stakes in projects that threaten irreplaceable ecosystems, Tribal rights, and sacred sites. For instance, in September 1865, the War Department’s cavalry massacred dozens of Paiute and Shoshone souls at a site now known as Peehee Mu’huh in Nevada. Nearby, in January 2021, the Federal Government rushed through a 15-month permitting process for Lithium America’s Thacker Pass mine without adequate input from Tribes and communities. The previous Administration later awarded the company a $2.3 billion loan to get started. But in 2025, when the company could not meet their loan conditions, the Trump Administration instead took shares in the company. 

Congress needs to exercise strong oversight to respect Tribal sovereignty, protect the American public, guard against speculative public investments, corruption, insider dealing, and ensure agencies carry out their responsibilities to protect wildlife and the environment. Mining causes permanent impacts to land and people. Our government should protect the public interest and ensure that projects proceed only with proper environmental protections, accountability to communities, and consent from Tribes. 

Resource nationalism—when a government asserts control over domestic natural resources—is not new to the United States nor anywhere else in the world. However, the United States is the only country in the world where any person, foreign or domestic, can privatize public minerals and pay zero in royalties to the American taxpayer. In fact, one of our country’s greatest mineral supply chain weaknesses is the nineteenth century statute that governs domestic mining. According to our 1872 Mining Law, miners do not ask for permission. They simply claim public minerals for themselves, leaving the government with very few options to secure those supplies without a contract to buy a portion of the mine’s future output.

In every other country in the world, the government exercises some discretion over mining activity according to terms in a lease, license, or concession conditioned upon royalty payments and revenue sharing. The blueprint for more mineral security isn’t secretive government investments in troubled mining projects. For a better way forward, Congress should pass the Mining Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Prevention Act, creating a modern system that provides mineral security, land use certainty, and taxpayer fairness. 

More: Read a press statement from Aaron Mintzes.

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