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Tag: Climate change

  • NC has cleanest air in decades, state says in new report

    North Carolinians are breathing the cleanest air in decades, according to new state data from the Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ).

    The NCDEQ released its updated Air Quality Trends in North Carolina report on Friday. The report attributes the decline in air pollution emissions to efforts by state leaders, regulatory agencies, electric utilities, industry and the public to address air quality concerns over the last 50 years. The report said carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide emissions in particular reached all-time lows in 2022, the latest year for which data is available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    “Even as our population and economy continue to grow, North Carolina’s air quality keeps getting better and better,” said DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson. “By controlling air pollution, we are giving every North Carolinian a cleaner, healthier future.”

    “Our air quality continues to improve thanks to tireless efforts by our dedicated staff, partners and a wide variety of stakeholders who have come together to implement sound environmental policies,” said Mike Abraczinskas, Director of the Division of Air Quality.

    The report said statewide emissions of the air pollutants regulated under the federal Clean Air Act have also declined sharply from 1990 through 2022. Specifically, the report said emissions fell in the following categories:

    • 95% for sulfur dioxide (SO2).
    • 74% for carbon monoxide (CO).
    • 71% for nitrogen oxides (NOx).
    • 48% for fine particles (PM2.5).
    • 67% for volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

    The state said the measured concentrations of those pollutants have been below every federal health-based standard for more than a decade, with average concentrations of SO2 95% below the federal standard and nitrogen dioxide 89% below the standard. According to data from the state, CO, NOx and VOC emissions have declined by 81%, 72% and 85%, respectively, from 1990 through 2022, from those on-road sources of air pollution.

    The state added it expects to see futher reductions from the transportation sector in the coming years due to increasing adoption of electric vehicles.

    NCDEQ in their report state that cars, trucks and other vehicles on North Carolina roads emit far less pollution than older vehicles, which they said is attributed to improved engine and fuel standards and more advanced emissions controls.

    More of the state’s power now comes from clean sources such as solar, wind and nuclear energy, and NCDEQ said the state’s transition away from coal for power generation has been a major driver of these changes.

    The report also provided these additional findings:

    • The number of “Code Red” air quality days continues to be low. From 2015 through 2024, North Carolina recorded just two days of “Code Red or above for ozone in the state, compared to 84 such days from 2005 through 2014.
    • Visibility in national and state parks improved in the last three decades. In 2023, visitors could see as afar as 119 miles at the Great Smoke Mountains Natioanl Park during an average clear day, compared to just 54 miles in 1996.
    • Net greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion have decreased by 38% from 2005 through 2020.
    • Combined emissions from federally designated Hazard Air Pollutatnts and state-designated Toxic Air Pollutatns fell by more than 108 million pounds between 1993 and 2022, an 82% drop.

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  • In Antarctica, Photos Show a Remote Area Teeming With Life Amid Growing Risks From Climate Change

    ANTARCTICA (AP) — The Southern Ocean is one of the most remote places on Earth, but that doesn’t mean it is tranquil. Tumultuous waves that can swallow vessels ensure that the Antarctic Peninsula has a constant drone of ocean. While it can be loud, the view is serene — at first glance, it is only deep blue water and blinding white ice.

    Several hundred meters (yards) off the coast emerges a small boat with a couple dozen tourists in bright red jackets. They are holding binoculars, hoping for a glimpse of the orcas, seals and penguins that call this tundra home.

    They are in the Lemaire Channel, nicknamed the “Kodak Gap,” referring to the film and camera company, because of its picture-perfect cliffs and ice formations. This narrow strip of navigable water gives anybody who gets this far south a chance to see what is at stake as climate change, caused mainly by the burning of oil, gas and coal, leads to a steady rise in global average temperatures.

    The Antarctic Peninsula stands out as one of the fastest warming places in the world. The ocean that surrounds it is also a major repository for carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to warming. It captures and stores roughly 40% of the CO2 emitted by humans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    On a recent day, Gentoo penguins, who sport slender, orange beaks and white spots above their eyes, appeared to be putting on a show. They took breaks from their dives into the icy water to nest on exposed rock. As the planet warms, they are migrating farther south. They prefer to colonize rock and fish in open water, allowing them to grow in population.

    The Adelie penguins, however, don’t have the same prognosis. The plump figures with short flippers and wide bright eyes are not able to adapt in the same way.

    By 2100, 60% of Adelie penguin colonies around Antarctica could threatened by warming, according to one study. They rely on ice to rest and escape predators. If the water gets too warm, it will kill off their food sources. From 2002 to 2020, roughly 149 billion metric tons of Antarctic ice melted per year, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

    For tourists, Antarctica is still a giant, glacial expanse that is home to only select species that can tolerate such harsh conditions. For example, in the Drake Passage, a dangerous strip of tumultuous ocean, tourists stand in wonder while watching orca whales swim in the narrow strip of water and Pintado petrels soar above.

    The majestic views in Antarctica, however, will likely be starkly different in the decades ahead. The growing Gentoo penguin colonies, the shrinking pieces of floating ice and the increasing instances of exposed rock in the Antarctic Peninsula all underscore a changing landscape.

    Associated Press writer Caleigh Wells contributed to this report from Cleveland.

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – December 2025

    Associated Press

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  • Colorado River water negotiators appear no closer to long-term agreement

    LAS VEGAS — The seven states that rely on the Colorado River to supply farms and cities across the U.S. West appear no closer to reaching a consensus on a long-term plan for sharing the dwindling resource.

    The river’s future was the center of discussions this week at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas, where water leaders from California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming gathered alongside federal and tribal officials.

    It comes after the states blew past a November deadline for a new plan to deal with drought and water shortages after 2026, when current guidelines expire. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has set a new deadline of Feb. 14.

    Nevada’s lead negotiator said it is unlikely the states will reach agreement that quickly.

    “As we sit here mid-December with a looming February deadline, I don’t see any clear path to a long-term deal, but I do see a path to the possibility of a shorter-term deal to keep us out of court,” John Entsminger of the Southern Nevada Water Authority told The Associated Press.

    More than 40 million people across seven states, Mexico and Native American tribes depend on the water from the river. Farmers in California and Arizona use it to grow the nation’s winter vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and carrots. It provides water and electricity to millions of homes and businesses across the basin.

    But longstanding drought, chronic overuse and increasing temperatures have forced a reckoning on the river’s future. Existing water conservation agreements that determine who must use less in times of shortage expire in 2026. After two years of negotiating, states still haven’t reached a deal for what comes next.

    The federal government continues to refrain from coming up with its own solution — preferring the seven basin states reach consensus themselves. If they don’t, a federally imposed plan could leave parties unhappy and result in costly, lengthy litigation.

    Not only is this water fight between the upper and lower basins, individual municipalities, tribal nations and water agencies have their own stakes in this battle. California, which has the largest share of Colorado River water, has over 200 water agencies alone, each with their own customers.

    “It’s a rabbit hole you can dive down in, and it is incredibly complex,” said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.

    During a Thursday panel of state negotiators, none appeared willing to bend on their demands. Each highlighted what their state has done to conserve water, from turf-removal projects to canal lining in order to reduce seepage, and they explained why their state can’t take on more. Instead, they said, others should bear the burden.

    Entsminger, of Nevada, said he could see a short-term deal lasting five years that sets new rules around water releases and storage at Lakes Powell and Mead — two key reservoirs.

    Lower Basin states pitched a reduction of 1.5 million acre-feet per year to cover a structural deficit that occurs when water evaporates or is absorbed into the ground as it flows downstream. An acre-foot is enough water to supply two to three households a year.

    But they want to see a similar contribution from the Upper Basin. The Upper Basin states, however, don’t think they should have to make additional cuts because they already don’t use their full share of the water and are legally obligated to send a certain amount of water downstream.

    “Our water users feel that pain,” said Estevan López, New Mexico’s representative for the Upper Colorado River Commission.

    Upper Basin states want less water released from Lake Powell to Lake Mead.

    But Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said he hasn’t seen anything on the table from the Upper Basin that would compel him to ask Arizona lawmakers to approve those demands.

    Within the coming weeks, the Bureau of Reclamation will release a range of possible proposals, but it will not identify a specific set of operating guidelines the federal government would prefer.

    Scott Cameron, the bureau’s acting commissioner, implored the states to find compromise.

    “Cooperation is better than litigation,” he said during the conference. “The only certainty around litigation in the Colorado River basin is a bunch of water lawyers are going to be able to put their children and grandchildren through graduate school. There are much better ways to spend several hundred million dollars.”

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  • Major climate research center on Trump administration chopping block

    The Trump administration intends to dismantle one of the world’s leading climate research institutions over what it said on Tuesday were concerns about “climate alarmism,” despite opposition to the plan.

    The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), established in 1960 as a federally funded research and education hub in Boulder, Colorado, will be broken up, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said on social media.

    Any of its operations deemed “vital,” such as weather research, will be moved “to another entity or location,” he said.

    “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” Vought said.

    The plan was first reported by USA Today. It said moves to dismantle NCAR will begin immediately.

    Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished NCAR scholar, told The Washington Post breaking up the laboratory would result in a major loss of scientific research.

    Trenberth, an honorary academic in physics at New Zealand’s University of Auckland, said the center was crucial to the search for advanced climate science discoveries.

    Antonio Busalacchi, the president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which oversees NCAR, told the Post that, “Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters.”

    Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement on Tuesday that he hadn’t been briefed on the plans by White House officials.

    However, he said part of the NCAR’s work provides data on severe weather events “that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

    “If true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked,” Polis said. “If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery.”

    President Trump has sought in his second term in office to roll back clean energy and climate initiatives established under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

    Mr. Trump has referred to climate change as a “con job” and, in a speech to the United Nations in September, called it the “biggest hoax ever perpetrated” against the world.

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  • EPA hasn’t released completed PFAS health review; NC scientists want to know why

    A group of North Carolina health and science leaders is calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to release a long-awaited toxicity report on PFNA, a “forever chemical” found in drinking water systems in North Carolina and nationwide.

    The request comes after a ProPublica investigation reported that EPA scientists completed the PFNA toxicity assessment in April and prepared it for public release, citing internal documents and two agency scientists familiar with the report. The assessment has still not been published.

    In a letter sent last month to Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, East Carolina University and several former EPA officials urged him to press the agency for transparency. The signatories wrote that without access to the findings, “families in North Carolina, and across the country, [cannot] know their water is safe.”

    PFNA, part of the PFAS class of chemicals used in industrial and consumer products, has been linked in scientific studies to developmental effects, liver damage and reproductive harms. It has been detected in drinking water serving an estimated 26 million people, according to the Environmental Working Group.

    Dr. Kathleen Shapley-Quinn, the executive director of Carolina Advocates for Climate, Health and Equity, is one of the dozens of North Carolina health experts who signed the letter.

    “We know PFNA harms human health, and we need to understand where it is and how much of it is there,” Shapley-Quinn said. “Without that information, we’re swimming in a sea of unknowns.”

    Shapley-Quinn, who is a family physician, says the lack of a public report leaves communities unsure whether their water poses a risk — and leaves health officials without the data needed to identify where cleanup or monitoring efforts should be focused.

    “Communities that already know they’re affected are worried about what this means for their families,” Shapley-Quinn said. “And in places where we don’t have data, people don’t even know whether to be concerned.”

    EPA did not answer specific questions from WRAL about the status of the assessment, when it would be released or what has contributed to the delay. In a statement, the agency said the “Trump EPA is committed to addressing PFAS to ensure that Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water,” and cited ongoing litigation over national PFAS drinking-water standards.

    The agency said it intends to defend drinking-water limits for PFOA and PFOS, two of the most studied PFAS chemicals, but is asking a federal court to vacate limits for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX and several mixtures while it reconsiders how those regulations were issued.

    The experts’ letter to Rep. Murphy notes that EPA scientists have already completed the work and argues that releasing the assessment is a basic matter of public transparency. 

    “We still don’t have the information that was rightfully asked for on behalf of the public, who funded this report,” Shapley-Quinn said.

    PFAS contamination has been documented in hundreds of North Carolina communities, including extremely high levels in the lower Cape Fear region and areas near military installations. Researchers say the PFNA assessment would help determine whether additional protections are needed.

    Rep. Murphy, who co-chairs the GOP Doctors Caucus and represents areas with known PFAS contamination, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    “In the absence of information, it’s unsettling,” Shapley-Quinn said. “But with accurate data, we can make informed choices and reduce risks. That’s what this report is supposed to provide.”

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  • As reefs vanish, assisted coral fertilization offers hope in the Dominican Republic

    BAYAHIBE, Dominican Republic — Oxygen tank strapped to his back, Michael del Rosario moves his fins delicately as he glides along an underwater nursery just off the Dominican Republic coast, proudly showing off the “coral babies” growing on metal structures that look like large spiders. The conservationist enthusiastically points a finger to trace around the largest corals, just starting to reveal their vibrant colors.

    Del Rosario helped plant these tiny animals in the nursery after they were conceived in an assisted reproduction laboratory run by the marine conservation organization Fundemar. In a process something like in vitro fertilization, coral egg and sperm are joined to form a new individual.

    It’s a technique that’s gaining momentum in the Caribbean to counter the drastic loss of corals due to climate change, which is killing them by heating up oceans and making it more difficult for those that survive to reproduce naturally.

    “We live on an island. We depend entirely on coral reefs, and seeing them all disappear is really depressing,” del Rosario said once back on the surface, his words flowing like bubbles underwater. “But seeing our coral babies growing, alive, in the sea gives us hope, which is what we were losing.”

    The state of corals around the Dominican Republic, as in the rest of the world, is not encouraging. Fundemar’s latest monitoring last year found that 70% of the Dominican Republic’s reefs have less than 5% coral coverage. Healthy colonies are so far apart that the probability of one coral’s eggs meeting another’s sperm during the spawning season is decreasing.

    “That’s why assisted reproduction programs are so important now, because what used to be normal in coral reefs is probably no longer possible for many species,” biologist Andreina Valdez, operations manager at Fundemar, said at the organization’s new marine research center. “So that’s where we come in to help a little bit.”

    Though many people may think corals are plants, they are animals. They spawn once a year, a few days after the full moon and at dusk, when they release millions of eggs and sperm in a spectacle that turns the sea around them into a kind of Milky Way. Fundemar monitors spawning periods, collects eggs and sperm, performs assisted fertilization in the laboratory, and cares for the larvae until they are strong enough to be taken to the reef.

    In the laboratory, Ariel Álvarez examines one of the star-shaped pieces on which the corals are growing through a microscope. They’re so tiny they can hardly be seen with the naked eye. Álvarez switches off the lights, turns on an ultraviolet light, and the coral’s rounded, fractal shapes appear through a camera on the microscope projected onto a screen.

    One research center room holds dozens of fish tanks, each with hundreds of tiny corals awaiting return to the reef. Del Rosario said the lab produces more than 2.5 million coral embryos per year. Only 1% will survive in the ocean, yet that figure is better than the rate with natural fertilization on these degraded reefs now, he said.

    In the past, Fundemar and other conservation organizations focused on asexual reproduction. That meant cutting a small piece of healthy coral and transplanting it to another location so that a new one would grow. The method can produce corals faster than assisted fertilization.

    The problem, Andreina Valdez said, is that it clones the same individual, meaning all those coral share the same disease vulnerabilities. In contrast, assisted sexual reproduction creates genetically different individuals, reducing the chance that a single illness could strike them all down.

    Australia pioneered assisted coral fertilization. It’s expanding in the Caribbean, with leading projects at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Carmabi Foundation in Curaçao, and it’s being adopted in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, Valdez said.

    “You can’t conserve something if you don’t have it. So (these programs) are helping to expand the population that’s out there,” said Mark Eakin, corresponding secretary for the International Coral Reef Society and retired chief of the Coral Reef Watch program of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    But the world must still tackle “the 800-pound gorilla of climate change,” Eakin said, or a lot of the restoration work “is just going to be wiped out.”

    Burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal produces greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, driving up temperatures both on Earth’s surface and in its seas. Oceans are warming at twice the rate of 20 years ago, according to UNESCO’s most recent State of the Ocean Report last year.

    And that’s devastating for corals. Rising heat causes them to feel sick and expel the algae that live in their tissue and provide them both their striking colors and their food. The process is known as bleaching because it exposes the coral’s white skeleton. The corals may survive, but they are weakened and vulnerable to disease and death if temperatures don’t drop.

    Half the world’s reefs have been lost since 1950, according to research by the University of British Columbia published in the journal One Earth.

    For countries such as the Dominican Republic, in the so-called “hurricane corridor,” preserving reefs is particularly important. Coral skeletons help absorb wave energy, creating a natural barrier against stronger waves.

    “What do we sell in the Dominican Republic? Beaches,” del Rosario said. “If we don’t have corals, we lose coastal protection, we lose the sand on our beaches, and we lose tourism.”

    Corals also are home to more than 25% of marine life, making them crucial for the millions of people around the world who make a living from fishing.

    Alido Luis Báez knows this well.

    It’s not yet dawn in Bayahibe when he climbs into a boat to fish with his father, who at 65 still goes to sea every week. The engine roars as they travel mile after mile until the coastline fades into the horizon. To catch tuna, dorado, or marlin, Luis Báez sails up to 50 miles offshore.

    “We didn’t have to go so far before,” he said. “But because of overfishing, habitat loss, and climate change, now you have to go a little further every day.”

    Things were very different when his father, also named Alido Luis, started fishing in the 1970s. Back then, they went out in a sailboat, and the coral reefs were so healthy they found plenty of fish close to the coast.

    “I used to be a diver, and I caught a lot of lobster and queen conch,” he said in a voice weakened by the passage of time. “In a short time, I would catch 50 or 60 pounds of fish. But now, to catch two or three fish, they spend the whole day out there.”

    Del Rosario said there’s still time to halt the decline of the reefs.

    “More needs to be done, of course … but we are investing a lot of effort and time to preserve what we love so much,” he said. “And we trust and believe that many people around the world are doing the same.”

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    Follow Teresa de Miguel on X at @tdemigueles

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Banking on carbon markets 2.0: why financial institutions should engage with carbon credits | Fortune

    The global carbon market is at an inflection point as discussions during the recent COP meeting in Brazil demonstrated. 

    After years of negotiations over carbon market rules under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, countries are finally moving on to the implementation phase, with more than 30 countries already developing Article 6 strategies. At the same time, the voluntary market is evolving after a period of intense scrutiny over the quality and integrity of carbon credit projects.

    The era of Carbon Markets 2.0 is characterised by high integrity standards and is increasingly recognised as critical to meeting the emission reduction goals of the Paris Agreement.

    And this ongoing transition presents enormous opportunities for financial institutions to apply their expertise to professionalise the trade of carbon credits and restore confidence in the market. 

    The engagement of banks, insurance companies, asset managers and others can ensure that carbon markets evolve with the same discipline, risk management, and transparency that define mature financial systems while benefitting from new business opportunities.

    Carbon markets 2.0

    Carbon markets are an untapped opportunity to deliver climate action at speed and scale. Based on solutions available now, they allow industries to take action on emissions for which there is currently no or limited solution, complementing their decarbonization programs and closing the gap between the net zero we need to achieve and the net zero that is possible now. They also generate debt-free climate finance for emerging and developing economies to support climate-positive growth – all of which is essential for the global transition to net zero.

    Despite recent slowdowns in carbon markets, the volume of credit retirements, representing delivered, verifiable climate action, was higher in the first half of 2025 than in any prior first half-year on record. Corporate climate commitments are increasing, driving significant demand for carbon credits to help bridge the gap on the path to meeting net-zero goals.

    According to recent market research from the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity initiative (VCMI), businesses are now looking for three core qualities in the market to further rebuild their trust: stability, consistency, and transparency – supported by robust infrastructure. These elements are vital to restoring investor confidence and enabling interoperability across markets.

    MSCI estimates that the global carbon credit market could grow from $1.4 billion in 2024 to up to $35 billion by 2030 and between $40 billion and $250 billion by 2050. Achieving such growth will rely on institutions equipped with capital, analytical rigour, risk frameworks, and market infrastructure.

    Carbon Markets 2.0 will both benefit from and rely on the participation of financial institutions. Now is the time for them to engage, support the growth and professionalism of this nascent market, and, in doing so, benefit from new business opportunities.

    The opportunity

    Institutional capital has a unique role to play in shaping the carbon market as it grows. Financial institutions can go beyond investing or lending to high-quality projects by helping build the infrastructure that will enable growth at scale. This includes insurance, aggregation platforms, verification services, market-making capacity, and long-term investment vehicles. 

    By applying their expertise and understanding of the data and infrastructure required for a functioning, transparent market, financial institutions can help accelerate the integration of carbon credits into the global financial architecture. 

    As global efforts to decarbonise intensify, high-integrity carbon markets offer financial institutions a pathway to deliver tangible climate impact, support broader social and nature-positive goals, and unlock new sources of revenue, such as:

    • Leveraging core competencies for market growth, including advisory, lending, project finance, asset management, trading, market access, and risk management solutions.
    • Unlocking new commercial pathways and portfolio diversification beyond existing business models, supporting long-term growth, and facilitating entry into emerging decarbonisation-driven markets.
    • Securing first-mover advantage, helping to shape norms, gain market share, and capture opportunities across advisory, structuring, and product innovation.
    • Deepening client engagement by helping clients navigate carbon markets to add strategic value and strengthen long-term relationships.

    Harnessing the opportunity

    To make the most of these opportunities, financial institutions should consider engagements in high-integrity carbon markets to signal confidence and foster market stability. Visible participation, such as integrating high-quality carbon credits into institutional climate strategies, can help normalise the voluntary use of carbon credits alongside decarbonisation efforts and demonstrate leadership in climate-aligned financial practices.

    Financial institutions can also deliver solutions that reduce market risk and improve project bankability. For instance, de-risking mechanisms like carbon credit insurance can mitigate performance, political, and delivery risks, addressing one of the core challenges holding back investments in carbon projects. 

    Additionally, diversified funding structures, including blended finance and concessional capital, can lower the cost of capital and de-risk early-stage startups. Fixed-price offtake agreements with investment-grade buyers and the use of project aggregation platforms can improve cash flow predictability and risk distribution, further enhancing bankability.

    By structuring investments into carbon project developers, funds, or the broader market ecosystem, financial institutions can unlock much-needed finance and create an investable pathway for nature and carbon solutions.

    For instance, earlier this year JPMorgan Chase struck a long-term offtake agreement for carbon credits tied to CO₂ capture, blending its roles as investor and market facilitator. Standard Chartered is also set to sell jurisdictional forest credits on behalf of the Brazilian state of Acre, while embedding transparency, local consultation, and benefit-sharing into the deal. These examples offer promising precedents in demonstrating that institutions can act not only as financiers but as integrators of high-integrity carbon markets.

    The institutions that lead the growth of carbon markets will not only drive climate and nature outcomes but also unlock strategic commercial advantages in an emerging and rapidly evolving asset class.

    However, the window to secure first-mover advantage is narrow: carbon markets are now shifting from speculation to implementation. Now is the moment for financial institutions to move from the sidelines and into leadership, helping shape the future of high-integrity carbon markets while capturing the opportunities they offer.

    The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

    Usha Rao-Monari

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  • This Startup’s New Product Is Targeting Plastic Pollution With a Novel Kind of Recyclable Packaging

    They are officially announcing their new second-generation bottle platform, which they call PB1, on Thursday. 

    This time, they are relying less on bioplastic and putting more emphasis on fiber bottle technology that can be recycled using the paper recycling infrastructure already in place. “The mission of the company has always been to effectively develop a strong case study that offers a picture of what it could look like to move beyond plastics,” says Cove CEO and founder Alex Totterman.

    The company says that their first launches in 2026 will include a focus on cosmetics and personal care, and they think the volume of the PB1 bottle could be measured in the “tens of millions of units” by the year after.

    Cove, which has raised $29 million so far, began about seven years ago with a problem, curiosity, and a hopeful solution. While working for a water purification startup, Totterman came face-to-face with the massive problem of microplastics. “I’ve always been very interested in sustainability, more on solving it than being worried about it,” Totterman adds. “It just seems sort of obvious—why wouldn’t you try and find a solution?”

    This first solution was Cove’s initial product: a single-use water bottle made from polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA. This mouthful of a polymer is made by fermenting sugars and fats from cooking oil gathered from local restaurants, and the bottles made from it can theoretically biodegrade within one to five years. While this sounds awesome in theory, Cove faced all sorts of barriers: It was expensive to create, relied on inconsistent industrial composting infrastructure, and bioplastic bottles themselves ran the risk of mucking up conventional recycling streams. 

    “For us,” Totterman adds, “it was about going back to the first principles of if we want to really have the impact we’re looking for, how do we deliver the biomaterial in a format that would actually work?” 

    Sara Kiley Watson

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  • The country’s largest all-electric hospital is about to open in Orange County

    A new hospital at UC Irvine opens Wednesday and it will be all-electric — only the second such medical center, and the largest, in the country so far.

    People live through some of the toughest moments of their lives in hospitals, so they need to be as comfortable as possible. Hospitals traditionally connect with natural gas lines several times bigger than those connected to residential homes, to ensure that rooms are always warm or cool enough and have sufficient hot water.

    But burning that natural gas is one of the main ways that buildings cause climate change. The way we build and operate buildings is responsible for more than one-third of global greenhouse gases.

    UCI Health–Irvine will include 144 beds and will be entirely electric.

    The difference is manifest in the hospital’s new kitchen.

    Yes, said principal project manager Jess Langerud on a recent tour, people are permitted to eat fried food in a hospital. Here, the fryer is electric. “After all, you still have to have your crunchy fries, right?”

    He moved over to an appliance that looked like a stove but with metal zigzagging across the top instead of the usual burners. “I can still put your sear marks on your steak or burger with an infrared grill that’s fully electric,” said Langerud. “It’ll look like it came off your flame-broiled grill.”

    The kitchen, though, is relatively minor. One of the real heavy hitters when it comes to energy use in any new building, and especially in hospitals, are the water heaters. At UCI Health–Irvine, that means a row of 100-gallon water heaters 20 feet long.

    1

    2

    Art work lines the hallways shown with the nurses station in the foreground at UCI Health - Irvine hospital building

    1. Four electric water heaters service the hospital building. It’s a 144-bed facility, with no natural gas or fuel. (Gary Coronado/For The Times) 2. Art lines the hallways near the nurses’ station. (Gary Coronado/For The Times)

    “This is an immense electrical load we’re looking at right here,” said Joe Brothman, director of general services at UCI Health.

    The other heaviest use of energy in the complex is keeping rooms warm in winter and cool in summer. For that, UCI Health is employing rows of humming heat pumps installed on the rooftop.

    “The largest array, I think, this side of the Mississippi,” Brothman said.

    A floor below, indoors, racks of centrifugal chillers that control the refrigerant make him smile.

    “I love the way they sound,” Brothman said. “It sounds like a Ferrari sometimes, like an electric Ferrari.”

    While most of the complex is nonpolluting, there is one place where dirty energy is still in use: the diesel generators that are used for backup power. That’s due in part to the fact that plans for the complex were drawn up six years ago. Solar panels plus batteries have become much more common for backup power since then.

    The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building

    The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building, left, with the San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, right, next to the UCI Health–Irvine hospital.

    Blackouts are bad for everyone, but they are unacceptable for hospitals. If an emergency facility loses power, people die.

    So four 3-megawatt diesel generators sit on the roof of the facility’s central utility plant. Underground tanks hold 70,000 gallons of diesel fuel to supply them. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the National Fire Protection Assn. have codes that require testing the generators once a month at 30% power for half an hour, Brothman said.

    The emissions from burning that diesel are real, he conceded. But “it’s not something that you want to mess around with.”

    Normally a central utility plant for a large facility like this would be “very noisy. It’s grimy. Usually there’s hazardous chemicals,” said Brothman, who has managed physical plants for many years. “Here there’s no combustion. No carbon monoxide.”

    Tony Dover, energy management and sustainability officer at UCI Health, said the building project team is currently applying for LEED Platinum certification, the highest level the U.S. Green Building Council awards for environmentally sustainable architecture.

    Most of the energy and pollution savings at the hospital come from the way the building is run. But that tells only part of the story. The way the building was constructed in the first place is also a major consideration for climate change. Concrete is particularly damaging for the climate because of the way cement is made. Dover said lower-carbon concrete was used throughout the project.

    A tunnel from the UCI Health–Irvine hospital building leading to the Central Utility Plant

    Jess Langerud, principal project manager for the hospital, stands inside a tunnel leading from the hospital to the central utility plant.

    Alexi Miller, a mechanical engineer and director of building innovation at the New Buildings Institute, a nonprofit that gives technical advice on climate and buildings, said the new UCI hospital is a milestone and he hopes to see more like it.

    There are things Miller thinks could have been done differently. He’s not so much worried about using diesel generators for backup power, but he did suggest that a solar-plus-storage system might have been better than what UCI ended up with. Such systems, he said, “refuel themselves.” They would be “getting their fuel from the sun rather than from a tanker truck.”

    One area Miller believes UCI could have done better: the hot water heaters, which, despite being new, utilize an older and relatively inefficient technology called “resistance heat,” instead of heat-pump hot water heaters, which are now used regularly in commercial projects.

    “It’s a little surprising,” he said. “Had they chosen to go with heat-pump hot water heaters, they could have powered it roughly three times as long, because it would be three to four times as efficient.”

    But overall, “I think we should applaud what they’ve achieved in the construction of this building,” Miller said.

    There are other all-electric hospitals on the way: In 2026, UCLA Health plans to open a 119-bed neuropsychiatric hospital that does not use fossil fuels. And an all-electric Kaiser Permanente hospital is set to open in San Jose in 2029.

    Ingrid Lobet

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  • Michigan and Ohio State take rivalry to new heights with zero-waste game day experiences

    One of the oldest and most notorious rivalries in college football is between the University of Michigan and Ohio State. On Saturday afternoon, the Wolverines will take on the Buckeyes in Ann Arbor for their annual matchup. Behind the scenes, staffers at each school will compete for a totally different title.

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  • Scientists Just Found Another Way Antarctica Is Falling Apart

    The West Antarctic Ice Sheet covers some 760,000 square miles and is up to 1.2 miles thick. If it were to ever melt away entirely, it would add 10 feet to global sea levels. Even considering how quickly humans are heating the planet, such a change would likely unfold over centuries—that’s how much ice we’re talking about here. But scientists are finding more and more evidence that Antarctica’s ice is in far more peril than previously believed, with many abrupt changes, like the loss of sea ice, reinforcing one another.

    We can now add underwater “storms” to the troubles unfolding around the frozen continent. A new paper suggests that vortices are drawing relatively warm waters across the underside of the extension of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, known as the ice shelf, floating on the Southern Ocean, potentially accelerating its destruction.

    The seemingly serene waters around the shelf are in fact rather chaotic. For one, strong winds scour the sea surface, pushing it along. But what’s driving these storms is the gain and loss of ice: when it freezes, it ejects salt, and when it melts, it injects that fresh H2O into the sea. This changes the density of ocean water, creating vortices that draw warmth from the depths. “They look exactly like a storm,” said lead author Mattia Poinelli, a glaciologist at University of California, Irvine and an affiliate at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, describing the work in the journal Nature Geoscience. “They’re strongly energetic, so there is a very vertical and turbulent motion that happens near the surface.”

    This is bad news for the shelf because it displaces the insulating layer of frigid water where the ice meets the sea, which should prevent melting. Other scientists have found that instead of the underbelly being flat—which would help that insulating layer accumulate—it can undulate, creating currents that similarly expose the ice to warm waters. (Researchers are only recently learning these things because it’s exceedingly difficult to see what’s going on down there—advanced robots are now getting the job done.) “We’re really trying to understand, where is warm water getting in, how’s it getting in, and what are these processes by which the ice is melting from below?” said Clare Eayrs, a climate scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute, who wasn’t involved in the new paper.

    The troubles under the shelf are bad news for the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Think of the floating bit like a cork holding back the glacier resting on land. If melting along the shelf’s underbelly makes it break up, the sheet will march more quickly into the ocean, raising sea levels around the world.

    Not helping matters is the dramatic decline of sea ice surrounding the continent. All those chunks normally act as a buffer, absorbing the wave energy that would otherwise crash into the shelf and break it apart. Sea ice also helps keep marine temperatures cool: because it’s white, it reflects the sun’s energy back into space, but with darker waters exposed, the sea instead absorbs that heat.

    As sea ice disappears and the shelf degrades, more fresh water is added to the ocean, meaning more of the storms that drive more melting—and on and on. “In the future, where there is going to be more warm water, more melting, we’re going to probably see more of these effects in different areas of Antarctica,” Poinelli said.

    These storms may also help explain the retreat of Antarctica’s “grounding lines,” where the ice lifts off the land and begins floating on the ocean. Researchers have previously found that as fresh water flows beneath the ice sheet and into the ocean, it creates turbulence that draws up warm water, further hastening melting. Earlier this month, a separate team of researchers used a quarter-century’s worth of data to find grounding line retreat of up to 2,300 feet a year. When that happens, warm ocean water can access more parts of the glacier, eating away at the ice and making the entire sheet system less stable.

    And now storms could be adding to this attack on the grounding line. “This study provides a compelling mechanism of tiny but powerful storms that punch beneath the ice and accelerate melt,” said Pietro Milillo, a physicist at the University of Houston who co-authored the retreat paper but wasn’t involved in the storm research. “The kind of retreats that we see in our dataset can be partially explained with these underwater storms.”

    Just how much more melting we might see because of these storms remains an open question. Also, the finding came out of a model, though Poinelli said scientists have observed the dynamic in another area of Antarctica. Scientists desperately need more data to get a better idea of how fast this ice will disappear and, as a consequence, how quickly sea levels will rise. “We sometimes think the ice sheet responds slowly to changes, but this work, and our work, remind us that Antarctica can change on timescales of days or weeks,” Milillo said. “We need to monitor the underside of the ice shelf with the same urgency we monitor atmospheric storms.”

    This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/science/violent-storms-hidden-under-antarcticas-ice-could-be-speeding-its-decline/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

    Matt Simon, Grist

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  • Ambitious plan to store CO2 beneath the North Sea set to start operations

    NORTH SEA, Denmark — Appearing first as a dot on the horizon, the remote Nini oil field on Europe’s rugged North Sea slowly comes into view from a helicopter.

    Used to extract fossil fuels, the field is now getting a second lease on life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.

    In a process that almost reverses oil extraction, chemical giant INEOS plans to inject liquefied CO2 deep down into depleted oil reservoirs, 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) beneath the seabed.

    The Associated Press made a rare visit to the Siri platform, close to the unmanned Nini field, the final stage in INEOS’ carbon capture and storage efforts, named Greensand Future.

    When the project begins commercial operations next year, Greensand is expected to become the European Union’s first fully-operational offshore CO2 storage site.

    Environmentalists say carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, has a role to play in dealing with climate change but should not be used as an excuse by industries to avoid cutting emissions.

    Mads Gade, chief executive of INEOS Energy Europe, says it will initially begin storing 400,000 tons (363,000 metric tons) of CO2 per year, scaling up to as much as 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) annually by 2030.

    “Denmark has the potential to actually store more than several hundred years of our own emissions,” says Gade. “We are able to create an industry where we can support Europe in actually storing a lot of the CO2 here.”

    Greensand has struck deals with Danish biogas facilities to bury their captured carbon emissions into the Nini field’s depleted reservoirs.

    A “CO2 terminal” that temporarily stores the liquefied gas is being built at the Port of Esbjerg, on the western coast of the Danish Jutland peninsula.

    A purpose-built carrier vessel, dubbed “Carbon Destroyer 1,” is under construction in the Netherlands.

    Proponents of carbon capture technology say it is a climate solution because it can remove the greenhouse gas that is the biggest driver of climate change and bury it deep underground.

    They note the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top body of climate scientists, has said the technology is a tool in the fight against global warming.

    The EU has proposed developing at least 250 million tons (227 million metric tons) of CO2 storage per year by 2040, as part of plans to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050.

    Gade says carbon capture and storage is one of the best means of cutting emissions.

    “We don’t want to deindustrialize Europe,” he said. “We want to have actually a few instruments to decarbonize instead.”

    Experts at Denmark’s geological survey say Greensand sandstone rock is well-suited for storing the liquefied CO2. Almost a third of the rock volume is made up of tiny cavities, said Niels Schovsbo, senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

    “We found that there (are) no reactions between the reservoir and the injected CO2. And we find that the seal rock on top of that has sufficient capacity to withhold the pressure that is induced when we are storing CO2 in the subsurface,” added Schovsbo.

    “These two methods makes it a perfect site for storage right there.”

    But while there are many carbon capture facilities around the world, the technology is far from scale, sometimes uses fossil fuel energy in its operations and captures just a tiny fraction of worldwide emissions.

    The Greensand project aims to bury up to 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) of CO2 a year by 2030. The International Energy Agency says nearly 38 billion tons (34.5 billion metric tons) of CO2 were emitted globally last year.

    Environmental campaigners say CCS has been used as an excuse by industries to delay cutting emissions.

    “We could have CCS on those very few sectors where emissions are truly difficult or impossible to abate,” said Helene Hagel, head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace Denmark.

    “But when you have all sectors in society almost saying, we need to just catch the emissions and store them instead of reducing emissions — that is the problem.”

    While the chemical giant ramps up carbon storage efforts, it is also hoping to begin development at another previously unopened North Sea oil field.

    “The footprint we deliver from importing energy against producing domestic or regional oil and gas is a lot more important for the transition instead of importing with a higher footprint,” said Gade, defending the company’s plans.

    “We see a purpose in doing this for a period while we create a transition for Europe.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • The most climate-friendly groceries might not be in the supermarket

    The pollution from food is sneaky. Because the apple sitting on your kitchen counter isn’t really causing any harm.

    But chances are good that you didn’t pick it from a tree in your backyard. It required land and water to grow, machines to harvest and process, packaging to ship, trucks to transport and often refrigerators to store. Much of that process releases planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

    That’s why the global food system makes up roughly a third of worldwide, human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EDGAR FOOD pollution database.

    Meanwhile, roughly a third of the U.S. food supply is lost or wasted without being eaten, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It might never get harvested, it might spoil in transit or the grocery store might reject it for being the wrong size or color. That’s a big reason why some consumers are looking for less-wasteful alternatives ranging from farmers markets to delivery services for produce that didn’t meet supermarket size or appearance standards.

    “There’s a whole breadth of opportunities to purchase food,” said Julia Van Soelen Kim, food systems adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

    And during the week of Thanksgiving, this decision is especially high stakes because lots of grocery shoppers are buying for extra guests, and more food can mean a bigger climate impact.

    Here are tips for reducing impact by shopping beyond the grocery store.

    Wasted food is a financial and environmental bummer. It costs the average person $728 per year, and it amounts to about the same planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions every year as 42 coal-fired power plants. Can buying produce that would otherwise go to waste be the answer?

    The community supported agriculture box

    Jane Kolodinsky, professor emerita at the University of Vermont and director of research at Arrowleaf Consulting, has bought her produce directly from a local farmer for 30 years.

    It’s called Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. At the beginning of every harvest season, Kolodinsky pays that farm a fee. Then, once per week, she picks up a box of produce at the farm. Some CSA programs pick the produce, while others let you customize. Some deliver. An online database shows which farms participate in CSA programs.

    Since the food is grown nearby, there is less processing and packaging. “There’s a smaller carbon footprint for purchasing locally compared to global or national food distribution channels,” said Van Soelen Kim. “When they’re local, they’re traveling less distance, so less gas, less fuel.”

    Local farmers are also likely to grow whatever works best for the area’s climate and season. “When things are in season, they need less storage time, so less electricity for cold storage,” said Van Soelen Kim, who added that can also mean a smaller food bill.

    It’s not pollution-free, because the crops still require land and water, and the food does travel some distance. But CSAs avoid many steps in the modern food supply chain.

    That model is challenging for consumers who want to maintain the same shopping list year-round. Shopping in-season requires more flexibility. “I would encourage consumers to think, ’OK, year-round we want some hand fruit that’s firm,’” she said. “So maybe it’s apples, and then it’s pears, and then its gonna move to kiwis, and then is gonna move to pluots.”

    And in colder regions, she said there is still local produce. It’s just more likely to be dried, frozen or canned.

    Customers browse farmer’s market displays in Union Square, Jan. 13, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter K. Afriyie, File)

    The farmers market

    Kolodinsky said the oldest alternative food system is the farmers market, where vendors gather and sell directly to consumers. Growers also sell at farm stands that aren’t tied to a centralized, scheduled event.

    Farmers markets allow consumers more flexibility to pick the produce than a typical CSA. They also offer seasonal produce and less packaging and processing than a grocery store. Many also accept payment associated with government food assistance programs.

    Plus, these models cut down on waste because customers are more tolerant of produce that’s not a uniform size and shape, said Timothy Woods, a University of Kentucky agribusiness professor.

    “It doesn’t matter to me if one cucumber’s a couple inches longer than the other one,” he said. “Less waste means more efficient utilization of all the resources that farmers are putting out to produce that crop in the first place.”

    Other delivery services

    Farmers who sell to grocery stores typically have to meet high standards, Woods said. For example, there could be onions that never got big enough or the carrot that grew two roots — vegetables that are just as safe and tasty to eat. There’s also surplus harvest.

    “They will intentionally not pick certain melons that are undersized out in the field. And so you’ll have gleaning programs that will be people that are saying, ‘Those are perfectly good cantaloupe that are out there. We’ll send a team out there to pick those,’” said Woods.

    Shiitake mushrooms are displayed at the stand of a farmer who sells "ugly" produce at a discount at a farmers' market in San Francisco, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Haven Daley, File)

    Shiitake mushrooms are displayed at the stand of a farmer who sells “ugly” produce at a discount at a farmers’ market in San Francisco, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Haven Daley, File)

    He said services delivering food that doesn’t meet supermarket size or appearance requirements, such as Misfit Markets or Imperfect Produce, have become more popular in recent years.

    Van Soelen Kim said there isn’t a lot of data yet on whether these services have a significantly lower climate impact. They reduce food waste, but the food might come from far away.

    Misfits Market refreshes its online selection weekly. Customers then fill a box of often discounted groceries that might have misprinted labels or are undersized or blemished. They are delivered via a company truck or third-party courier such as FedEx. The company’s founder and CEO, Abhi Ramesh, said it minimizes emissions by having set delivery days instead of offering on-demand delivery.

    “By doing that, we batch all of our deliveries together. So it is one van to your ZIP code on that day. One truck that goes from our warehouse on that date,” he said.

    Ramesh said sometimes a farmer’s market or CSA is even better at offering nearby seasonal food than his company. But for a lot of the country, those services go away when the harvest season ends. “And so your local grocery store, believe it or not, is still transporting that from California. But the difference is we’re able to go and transport the food waste piece, which reduces a ton of emissions.”

    Woods’ advice for using services like Misfits Market is the same as other channels: Eat seasonally, eat locally and look for minimal packaging.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Ambitious plan to store CO2 beneath the North Sea set to start operations

    NORTH SEA, Denmark (AP) — Appearing first as a dot on the horizon, the remote Nini oil field on Europe’s rugged North Sea slowly comes into view from a helicopter.

    Used to extract fossil fuels, the field is now getting a second lease on life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.

    In a process that almost reverses oil extraction, chemical giant INEOS plans to inject liquefied CO2 deep down into depleted oil reservoirs, 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) beneath the seabed.

    The Associated Press made a rare visit to the Siri platform, close to the unmanned Nini field, the final stage in INEOS’ carbon capture and storage efforts, named Greensand Future.

    When the project begins commercial operations next year, Greensand is expected to become the European Union’s first fully-operational offshore CO2 storage site.

    Environmentalists say carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, has a role to play in dealing with climate change but should not be used as an excuse by industries to avoid cutting emissions.

    Future plans

    Mads Gade, chief executive of INEOS Energy Europe, says it will initially begin storing 400,000 tons (363,000 metric tons) of CO2 per year, scaling up to as much as 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) annually by 2030.

    “Denmark has the potential to actually store more than several hundred years of our own emissions,” says Gade. “We are able to create an industry where we can support Europe in actually storing a lot of the CO2 here.”

    Greensand has struck deals with Danish biogas facilities to bury their captured carbon emissions into the Nini field’s depleted reservoirs.

    A “CO2 terminal” that temporarily stores the liquefied gas is being built at the Port of Esbjerg, on the western coast of the Danish Jutland peninsula.

    A purpose-built carrier vessel, dubbed “Carbon Destroyer 1,” is under construction in the Netherlands.

    Climate solution

    Proponents of carbon capture technology say it is a climate solution because it can remove the greenhouse gas that is the biggest driver of climate change and bury it deep underground.

    They note the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top body of climate scientists, has said the technology is a tool in the fight against global warming.

    The EU has proposed developing at least 250 million tons (227 million metric tons) of CO2 storage per year by 2040, as part of plans to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050.

    Gade says carbon capture and storage is one of the best means of cutting emissions.

    “We don’t want to deindustrialize Europe,” he said. “We want to have actually a few instruments to decarbonize instead.”

    Experts at Denmark’s geological survey say Greensand sandstone rock is well-suited for storing the liquefied CO2. Almost a third of the rock volume is made up of tiny cavities, said Niels Schovsbo, senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

    “We found that there (are) no reactions between the reservoir and the injected CO2. And we find that the seal rock on top of that has sufficient capacity to withhold the pressure that is induced when we are storing CO2 in the subsurface,” added Schovsbo.

    “These two methods makes it a perfect site for storage right there.”

    Limitations and criticism

    But while there are many carbon capture facilities around the world, the technology is far from scale, sometimes uses fossil fuel energy in its operations and captures just a tiny fraction of worldwide emissions.

    The Greensand project aims to bury up to 8 million tons (7.3 million metric tons) of CO2 a year by 2030. The International Energy Agency says nearly 38 billion tons (34.5 billion metric tons) of CO2 were emitted globally last year.

    Environmental campaigners say CCS has been used as an excuse by industries to delay cutting emissions.

    “We could have CCS on those very few sectors where emissions are truly difficult or impossible to abate,” said Helene Hagel, head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace Denmark.

    “But when you have all sectors in society almost saying, we need to just catch the emissions and store them instead of reducing emissions — that is the problem.”

    While the chemical giant ramps up carbon storage efforts, it is also hoping to begin development at another previously unopened North Sea oil field.

    “The footprint we deliver from importing energy against producing domestic or regional oil and gas is a lot more important for the transition instead of importing with a higher footprint,” said Gade, defending the company’s plans.

    “We see a purpose in doing this for a period while we create a transition for Europe.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Why Iceland Is Becoming a Model for Renewable-Powered High-Performance Computing

    With abundant renewable energy, efficient cooling and community-first development, Iceland shows how data centers can grow without compromising the planet. Unsplash+

    As the demand for A.I.-ready digital infrastructure skyrockets, data center development has become an urgent and necessary foundation for a wide spectrum of high-performance computing technologies—and for the businesses that are increasingly dependent on them. Unsurprisingly, data center construction has surged globally. Yet as growth accelerates, teh roadblocks to building at the required pace and scale have become far more pronounced. 

    Arguably, the most critical factor in data center development today is access to power. Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of tech sustainability website Digiconomist, estimates that by the end of 2025, energy consumption by A.I. systems could reach 23 gigawatts—twice the total energy consumption of the Netherlands.

    This poses two intertwined challenges. First, many countries simply lack sufficient power or a modern grid capable of supporting these demands. Much of the U.S. and U.K. national grid infrastructure was built between 1950 and 1970 and designed around large coal-fired plants—a post-war regeneration system now decades overdue for modernization. As coal availability waned, nuclear and renewable sources such as wind and solar began to fill the gap. Yet, these types of energy systems take time to develop and rely heavily on robust, upgraded power networks. The sudden increase in power demand resulting from the proliferation of data centers has highlighted the crucial need for investment in power infrastructure globally.

    Second, the demand for such vast power has sharpened scrutiny on the carbon footprint of data centers. As a result, data-intensive businesses are increasingly looking for data center partners that have proven sustainability credentials and can help decarbonize their IT workloads. That often means looking further afield than your local neighborhood data center provider to find a partnership that is environmentally and financially beneficial and sustainable long-term. At atNorth, we are seeing unprecedented demand for environmentally responsible A.I. infrastructure at speed and scale. Power bottlenecks caused by power availability simply cannot be allowed to become a limiting factor to growth.

    The Icelandic example

    Data centers located in cooler climates such as the Nordics can leverage highly energy-efficient cooling systems that significantly reduce the energy required to power and cool the hardware they host. The region also benefits from abundant renewable energy and relatively young, resilient power and internet networks. 

    Iceland, in particular, is a global leader in clean energy: 71 percent of its energy is generated by hydropower, and 29 percent from geothermal energy. Icelandic data centers can combine renewable energy with its naturally cool ambient temperatures to achieve exceptional energy efficiency. While global average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)—the metric of data center energy efficiency where the ideal value is 1.0 (representing 100 percent efficiency)—hovers around 1.48, Icelandic facilities average between 1.1 and 1.2, enabling customers to significantly decarbonize their IT workloads. For example, BNP Paribas lowered its total cost of ownership, cut energy use by 50 percent and reduced CO₂ output by 85 percent by relocating a portion of its IT infrastructure to one of atNorth’s Icelandic facilities.

    Temperatures in Iceland typically range from 30°F (-1 °C) in winter to 52°F (11 °C) in summer, enabling free-air cooling of some IT workloads. As compute density increases to accommodate A.I. and other high-performance applications, more advanced cooling technologies—such as Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) or Direct to Chip Cooling—that allow water (or coolants) to reduce the temperature of the computer equipment more efficiently due to superior heat dissipation have become essential. These solutions are widely available in Iceland and across the Nordic countries, which are well known for their environmentally friendly ethos and circular economy principles.

    Moreover, Iceland’s political and economic stability offers another key advantage as geopolitical uncertainty grows across regions. Businesses are now more sensitive to the physical location of their data and the legal frameworks that govern it. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), Iceland has adopted the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and reinforced it with national legislation, resulting in robust safeguards for data privacy and security.

    Going beyond carbon reduction

    These factors have driven a surge in Nordic data center development in recent years, positioning the region at the forefront of the industry. While much of the world works to upgrade legacy power networks in order to start building data centers, the Nordic countries are addressing newer challenges associated with more mature data center development. Certainly, at atNorth, we have seen growing demand for a more holistic approach to sustainability and responsible operations. It is not enough to mitigate environmental impact; data center operators must deliver tangible benefits to the local communities in which we operate to support long-term sustainability and economic growth.

    Using the most sustainable materials possible is one factor that can showcase an honest commitment to care for the natural environment. atNorth’s ICE03 data center was constructed using Glulam, a sustainable laminated wood product with lower environmental impact and superior fire resistance compared to steel. Similarly, the site was insulated using sustainable Icelandic rockwool, produced from natural volcanic basalt and known for its durability, fire resistance and low ecological footprint.  

    The process of heat reuse—the recycling of waste heat from the data center cooling systems for use in the local community—is a practice that is common in the Nordic countries and growing in popularity across northern Europe. This is a fundamental part of sustainable data center design, and even in countries like Iceland, where naturally heated geothermal water is abundant, opportunities for further improvement remain. At ICE03, for example, atNorth partnered with the municipality of Akureyri to channel waste heat into a new community-run greenhouse, which will provide a space for schoolchildren to explore ecological farming practices and sustainable food production. These initiatives reduce carbon emissions for both the data center and the receiving organization while addressing specific local needs, such as fresh vegetable production in a country that imports 80 percent of its fresh produce.

    Community engagement is also becoming pivotal to the data center development process as competition over suitable land intensifies. Just as the concept of a “trusted brand” has proven fundamental in the consumer retail market—with some research suggesting that 81 percent of consumers need to trust a brand before considering a purchase—the same principle extends to regional decision-making that directly affects the lives of local people. Therefore, operators that can demonstrate a genuine commitment to good corporate citizenship will undoubtedly find more success.

    To ensure authentic integration with local communities, local hiring is essential. Over 90 percent of the workforce involved in developing atNorth’s ICE03 site came from nearby communities. The company also supports local education, charities and community projects through volunteer support and financial donations—sponsoring a local run in Akureyri, funding Reykjanesbær’s light festival and donating advanced mechatronics equipment to Akureyri University to support training for data center-related careers. 

    Building for the A.I. era—responsibly 

    As digitalization intensifies, so will the demand for high-performance data center capacity. Yet such rapid expansion carries risks that could seriously undermine long-term sustainability. The boom-and-reckoning pattern seen in industries like palm oil—where explosive growth preceded significant deforestation—serves as a warning. 

    The data center industry must learn from history and chart a new path in which digital infrastructure can be technologically advanced, environmentally responsible and locally beneficial. In short: data centers must be developed to meet A.I.-era performance demands while driving responsible growth and long-term value for clients, communities and our planet.

    Why Iceland Is Becoming a Model for Renewable-Powered High-Performance Computing

    Erling Freyr Guðmundsson

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  • The most climate-friendly groceries might not be in the supermarket

    The pollution from food is sneaky. Because the apple sitting on your kitchen counter isn’t really causing any harm.

    But chances are good that you didn’t pick it from a tree in your backyard. It required land and water to grow, machines to harvest and process, packaging to ship, trucks to transport and often refrigerators to store. Much of that process releases planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

    That’s why the global food system makes up roughly a third of worldwide, human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EDGAR FOOD pollution database.

    Meanwhile, roughly a third of the U.S. food supply is lost or wasted without being eaten, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It might never get harvested, it might spoil in transit or the grocery store might reject it for being the wrong size or color. That’s a big reason why some consumers are looking for less-wasteful alternatives ranging from farmers markets to delivery services for produce that didn’t meet supermarket size or appearance standards.

    “There’s a whole breadth of opportunities to purchase food,” said Julia Van Soelen Kim, food systems adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

    And during the week of Thanksgiving, this decision is especially high stakes because lots of grocery shoppers are buying for extra guests, and more food can mean a bigger climate impact.

    Here are tips for reducing impact by shopping beyond the grocery store.

    Jane Kolodinsky, professor emerita at the University of Vermont and director of research at Arrowleaf Consulting, has bought her produce directly from a local farmer for 30 years.

    It’s called Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. At the beginning of every harvest season, Kolodinsky pays that farm a fee. Then, once per week, she picks up a box of produce at the farm. Some CSA programs pick the produce, while others let you customize. Some deliver. An online database shows which farms participate in CSA programs.

    Since the food is grown nearby, there is less processing and packaging. “There’s a smaller carbon footprint for purchasing locally compared to global or national food distribution channels,” said Van Soelen Kim. “When they’re local, they’re traveling less distance, so less gas, less fuel.”

    Local farmers are also likely to grow whatever works best for the area’s climate and season. “When things are in season, they need less storage time, so less electricity for cold storage,” said Van Soelen Kim, who added that can also mean a smaller food bill.

    It’s not pollution-free, because the crops still require land and water, and the food does travel some distance. But CSAs avoid many steps in the modern food supply chain.

    That model is challenging for consumers who want to maintain the same shopping list year-round. Shopping in-season requires more flexibility. “I would encourage consumers to think, ’OK, year-round we want some hand fruit that’s firm,’” she said. “So maybe it’s apples, and then it’s pears, and then its gonna move to kiwis, and then is gonna move to pluots.”

    And in colder regions, she said there is still local produce. It’s just more likely to be dried, frozen or canned.

    Kolodinsky said the oldest alternative food system is the farmers market, where vendors gather and sell directly to consumers. Growers also sell at farm stands that aren’t tied to a centralized, scheduled event.

    Farmers markets allow consumers more flexibility to pick the produce than a typical CSA. They also offer seasonal produce and less packaging and processing than a grocery store. Many also accept payment associated with government food assistance programs.

    Plus, these models cut down on waste because customers are more tolerant of produce that’s not a uniform size and shape, said Timothy Woods, a University of Kentucky agribusiness professor.

    “It doesn’t matter to me if one cucumber’s a couple inches longer than the other one,” he said. “Less waste means more efficient utilization of all the resources that farmers are putting out to produce that crop in the first place.”

    Farmers who sell to grocery stores typically have to meet high standards, Woods said. For example, there could be onions that never got big enough or the carrot that grew two roots — vegetables that are just as safe and tasty to eat. There’s also surplus harvest.

    “They will intentionally not pick certain melons that are undersized out in the field. And so you’ll have gleaning programs that will be people that are saying, ‘Those are perfectly good cantaloupe that are out there. We’ll send a team out there to pick those,’” said Woods.

    He said services delivering food that doesn’t meet supermarket size or appearance requirements, such as Misfit Markets or Imperfect Produce, have become more popular in recent years.

    Van Soelen Kim said there isn’t a lot of data yet on whether these services have a significantly lower climate impact. They reduce food waste, but the food might come from far away.

    Misfits Market refreshes its online selection weekly. Customers then fill a box of often discounted groceries that might have misprinted labels or are undersized or blemished. They are delivered via a company truck or third-party courier such as FedEx. The company’s founder and CEO, Abhi Ramesh, said it minimizes emissions by having set delivery days instead of offering on-demand delivery.

    “By doing that, we batch all of our deliveries together. So it is one van to your ZIP code on that day. One truck that goes from our warehouse on that date,” he said.

    Ramesh said sometimes a farmer’s market or CSA is even better at offering nearby seasonal food than his company. But for a lot of the country, those services go away when the harvest season ends. “And so your local grocery store, believe it or not, is still transporting that from California. But the difference is we’re able to go and transport the food waste piece, which reduces a ton of emissions.”

    Woods’ advice for using services like Misfits Market is the same as other channels: Eat seasonally, eat locally and look for minimal packaging.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Takeaways From the COP30 Climate Summit in Brazil

    BELEM, Brazil (Reuters) -This year’s U.N. climate change summit ended with a tenuous compromise for a deal that skipped over most countries’ key demands but for one: committing wealthy countries to triple their spending to help others adapt to global warming. 

    Here are some of the takeaways from the COP30 climate summit held in Brazil’s Amazon city of Belem:

    Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had launched the summit calling for countries to agree on a “roadmap” for advancing a COP28 pledge to shift away from fossil fuels. 

    But it was a road to nowhere at this summit, as oil-rich Arab nations and others dependent on fossil fuels blocked any mention of the issue. Instead, the COP30 presidency created a voluntary plan that countries could sign on to – or not.

    The result was similar to Egypt’s COP27 and Azerbaijan’s COP29, where countries agreed to spend more money to address climate dangers while ignoring their primary cause.

    Nearly three-fourths of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 2020 have come from coal, oil and gas. Demand for these fuels is likely to rise through 2050, the International Energy Agency said in a report midway through the COP30 summit that reversed expectations of a rapid shift to clean energy. 

    GLOBAL CLIMATE UNITY ON THE BRINK

    The need to show global unity in climate talks was the main thing countries agreed, along with the idea that long-polluting wealthy countries should do most to tackle the problem. 

    But to get to a final deal, they ditched nearly all ambitions they’d brought – including mandatory tightening targets for reducing climate-warming emissions. 

    Brazil’s COP30 presidency lamented the United States’ snubbing of the talks. The absence of the world’s biggest economy – and biggest historical polluter – emboldened countries with fossil fuel interests.

    Rumbling concerns about a process that allows only a few to effectively veto collective deals grew louder, stoking calls for reform.

    After Brazil had promised a ‘COP of Truth’ that would set countries on course for action, the omission of any agreed implementation plans was glaring. 

    China played a leading role at the summit – but from behind the scenes. 

    President Xi Jinping skipped the talks as he typically does. But his delegation carried a strong message that China was prepared to deliver the clean energy technology the world needs to cut emissions. 

    Executives from Chinese solar, battery and electric vehicle companies were featured at the country’s exhibit pavilion – one of the first things delegates saw on entering the sprawling venue.

    China was not the only fast-developing nation in focus this year. The Indian delegation flexed more muscle in the negotiations, while South Africa rolled out a climate-linked agenda for its own November 22-23 G20 summit.

    FRAUGHT FUTURE FOR FORESTS AND INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

    Holding the summit in an Amazon forest city, Brazil touted the importance of the world’s remaining canopy for fighting climate change – along with the roughly half-billion Indigenous people seen as stewards of natural lands. 

    Many who attended from across the Amazon and the world felt frustrated they weren’t being heard. They staged several protests, and even stormed the COP30 compound gates – clashing with security before being pushed back out. 

    Countries announced about $9.5 billion in forest funding – including almost $7 billion for Brazil’s flagship tropical forest fund and another $2.5 billion for an initiative for Congo.

    But the summit ended on a sour note for many, as negotiators dropped efforts for a roadmap to meet the 2030 zero-deforestation pledge and gave no recognition for the protection of their lands. 

    ATTACKS ON CLIMATE SCIENCE

    While Lula and other world leaders had railed against misinformation and denial, COP30 talks didn’t help much in countering this year’s U.S. government assault on climate science.

    The summit also chipped away at global consensus around climate science by no longer recognizing the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the “best available science” to guide policy on climate change and its impacts.

    Instead, the final deal notes the importance of IPCC outputs along with “those produced in developing countries and relevant reports from regional groups and institutions.”

    And by sidelining fossil fuels and emissions targets, COP30 ignored the alarm bells being rung by scientists. 

    (Reporting by Katy DaigleEditing by Ros Russell)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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  • Many Hoped UN Climate Talks in Brazil Would Be Historic. They May Be Remembered as a Flop

    This year’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil had many unique aspects that could have been part of an historic outcome.

    COP30, as it’s called, was hosted in Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, a crucial regulator of climate and home to many Indigenous peoples who are both hit hard by climate change and are part of the solution. It had the heft of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an influential and charismatic leader on the international stage known for his ability to bring people together. And encouraged by Lula’s rousing speeches in the summit’s beginning days, more than 80 nations called for a detailed road map for the world to sharply reduce the use of gas, oil and coal, the main drivers of climate change.

    In the end, none of that mattered.

    The final decision announced Saturday, which included some tangible things like an increase in money to help developing nations adapt to climate change, was overall watered-down compared to many conferences in the past decade and fell far short of many delegates’ expectations. It didn’t mention the words “fossil fuels,” much less include a timeline to reduce their use.

    Instead of being remembered as historic, the conference will likely further erode confidence in a process that many environmentalists and even some world leaders have argued isn’t up to the challenge of confronting global temperature rise, which is leading to more frequent and intense extreme weather events like floods, storms and heat waves.

    The criticism was withering and came from many corners.

    “A climate decision that cannot even say ‘fossil fuels’ is not neutrality, it is complicity,” said Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez. “Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters.”

    Even those who saw some positives were quick to say they were looking toward the future.

    “Climate action is across many areas, so on the whole it is a mixed bag. They could have done much, much more,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.

    “All eyes are already turning to COP31,” added Nacpil, referring to next year’s conference, which will be held in Turkey.


    High expectations for COP30

    Saturday’s final resolution was the culmination of three years of talk, from measured optimism to hoopla, about a Conference of the Parties, as the summit is known, that could restore confidence in the ability of multilateral negotiations to tackle climate change. It was even called a “COP of truth.”

    From the time Lula was reelected in October 2022, he began pitching his vision of hosting a climate summit for the first time in the Amazon. By 2023, the U.N. had confirmed Brazil’s bid to host it in Belem. The choice of Belem, a coastal city in northeast Brazil, raised many questions, both in Brazil and in many countries, because Belem doesn’t have the infrastructure of other Brazilian cities such as Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo.

    For Lula, that was the point: This was a chance for the world to get a taste of the Amazon, truly understand what was at stake, and a chance for thousands of Indigenous peoples, who live across the vast territory shared by many South American nations, to participate.

    By the time the conference began Nov. 6 with two days of world leaders’ speeches, Lula was able to change the subject from Belem, in large part by laying out a vision of what the conference could be.

    “Earth can no longer sustain the development model based on the intensive use of fossil fuels that has prevailed over the past 200 years,” Lula said Nov. 7, adding: “The fossil fuel era is drawing to a close.”

    Words like those, coming from the leader who has both curbed deforestation in the Amazon and unabashedly supported oil exploration in it, raised hopes among many delegates, scientists and activists. Here was Lula, the ultimate pragmatist from a major oil-producing country, which gets most of its energy for domestic uses from renewables like hydropower, pushing a major change.


    Previous naming of fossil fuels

    In late 2023, during COP28 in Dubai, the final resolution declared the world needed to “transition away” from fossil fuels. The past two years, though, nothing had been done to advance that. Indeed, instead of phasing away, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide continue to rise.

    Now at COP30, there was talk of a “road map” to fundamentally changing world energy systems.

    A few days before the talks concluded, there were signs that even Lula, arguably Brazil’s most dominating political figure of the past 25 years, was tempering his expectations. In a speech Wednesday night, he made the case that climate change was an urgent threat that all people needed to pay attention to. But he was also careful to say that nations should be able to transition to renewable energies at their own pace, in line with their own capacities, and there was no intention to “impose anything on anybody.”

    Negotiators would lose much of Thursday, as a fire at the venue forced evacuations.


    An outcome that many nations blasted

    By Friday, the European Union, along with several Latin American and Pacific Island nations and others, were flatly rejecting the first draft of a resolution that didn’t identify fossil fuels as the cause of climate change or have any timeline to move away from them.

    “After 10 years, this process is still failing,” Maina Vakafua Talia, minister of environment for the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said in a speech Friday, talking about the decade since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set international goals to limit temperature rise.

    After an all-nighter from Friday into Saturday, the revised resolution, which U.N. officials called the “final,” did not include a mention of fossil fuels. Environmental activists decried the influence of major oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia, which historically have fought against proposals that put a timeline on reducing oil.

    When delegates met Saturday afternoon for the final plenary, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago gaveled in the text while also promising to continue the discussion of fossil fuels and work with Colombia on a road map that could be shared with other countries. Technically, Brazil holds the presidency of the climate talks until the summit in Turkey next year.

    That was little consolation for several dozen nations that complained, including some, such as Colombia, that flatly rejected the outcome.

    “Thank you for your statement,” do Lago would say after each one. “It will be noted in the report.”

    Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein, Melina Walling and Anton Delgado contributed to this report.

    Peter Prengaman, AP’s global climate and environment news director, was previously news director in Brazil.

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Indigenous People Reflect on the Meaning of Their Participation in COP30 Climate Talks

    BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Indigenous people filled the streets, paddled the waterways and protested at the heart of the venue to make their voices heard during the United Nations climate talks that were supposed to give them a voice like never before at the annual conference.

    As the talks, called COP30, concluded Saturday in Belem, Brazil, Indigenous people reflected on what the conference meant to them and whether they were heard.

    Brazilian leaders had high hopes that the summit, taking place in the Amazon, would empower the people who inhabit the land and protect the biodiversity of the world’s largest rainforest, which helps stave off climate change as its trees absorb carbon pollution that heats the planet.

    Many Indigenous people who attended the talks felt strengthened by the solidarity with tribes from other countries and some appreciated small wins in the final outcome. But for many, the talks fell short on representation, ambition and true action on climate issues affecting Indigenous people.

    “This was a COP where we were visible but not empowered,” said Thalia Yarina Cachimuel, a Kichwa-Otavalo member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, a group of Indigenous people from around the world.


    Some language wins but nothing on fossil fuels

    Taily Terena, an Indigenous woman from the Terena nation in Brazil, said she was happy because the text for the first time mentioned those rights explicitly.

    But Mindahi Bastida, an Otomí-Toltec member of A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, said countries should have pushed harder for agreements on how to phase out fuels like oil, gas and coal “and not to see nature as merchandise, but to see it as sacred.”

    Several nations pushed for a road map to curtail use of fossil fuels, which when burned release greenhouse gases that warm the planet. Saturday’s final decision left out any mention of fossil fuels, leaving many countries disappointed.

    Brazil also launched a financial mechanism that countries could donate to, which was supposed to help incentivize nations with lots of forest to keep those ecosystems intact.

    Although the initiative received monetary pledges from a few countries, the project and the idea of creating a market for carbon are false solutions that “don’t stop pollution, they just move it around,” said Jacob Johns, a Wisdom Keeper of the Akimel O’Otham and Hopi nations.

    “They hand corporations a license to keep drilling, keep burning, keep destroying, so long as they can point to an offset written on paper. It’s the same colonial logic dressed up as climate policy,” Johns said.

    “What we have seen at this COP is a focus on symbolic presence rather than enabling the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples,” Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, wrote in a message after the conference concluded.

    Edson Krenak, Brazil manager for Indigenous rights group Cultural Survival and member of the Krenak people, didn’t think negotiators did enough to visit forests or understand the communities living there. He also didn’t believe the 900 Indigenous people given access to the main venue was enough.

    Sônia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of Indigenous peoples, who is Indigenous herself, framed the convention differently.

    “It is undeniable that this is the largest and best COP in terms of Indigenous participation and protagonism,” she said.


    Protests showed power of Indigenous solidarity

    While the decisions by delegates left some Indigenous attendees feeling dismissed, many said they felt empowered by participating in demonstrations outside the venue.

    When the summit began on Nov. 10, Paulo André Paz de Lima, an Amazonian Indigenous leader, thought his tribe and others didn’t have access to COP30. During the first week, he and a group of demonstrators broke through the barrier to get inside the venue. Authorities quickly intervened and stopped their advancement.

    De Lima said that act helped Indigenous people amplify their voices.

    “After breaking the barrier, we were able to enter COP, get into the Blue Zone and express our needs,” he said, referring to the official negotiation area. “We got closer (to the negotiations), got more visibility.”

    The meaning of protest at this COP wasn’t just to get the attention of non-Indigenous people, it also was intended as a way for Indigenous people to commune with each other.

    On the final night before an agreement was reached, a small group with banners walked inside the venue, protesting instances of violence and environmental destruction from the recent killing of a Guarani youth on his own territory to the proposed Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project in Canada.

    “We have to come together to show up, you know? Because they need to hear us,” Leandro Karaí of the Guarani people of South America said of the solidarity among Indigenous groups. “When we’re together with others, we’re stronger.“

    They sang to the steady beat of a drum, locked arms in a line and marched down the long hall of the COP venue to the exit, breaking the silence in the corridors as negotiators remained deadlocked inside.

    Then they emerged, voices raised, under a yellow sky.

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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