NoCarbonFuel

States push climate superfund bills despite Trump’s opposition

Feb 17, 2026

President Donald Trump has made it quite clear how he feels about state laws that aim to make fossil fuel companies pay for damages caused by climate change. An executive order issued in April compared these efforts — known as climate superfund laws — to extortion. The administration has since sued New York and Vermont, the two states with these measures on the books.

This hostility, however, has not stopped a growing number of state legislatures from taking up their own climate superfund proposals. Last month, legislative committees in Maine and New Jersey advanced bills. Lawmakers in Illinois, Oregon, and Rhode Island are also considering such legislation. Connecticut lawmakers plan to add their state to the list.

Why do the proposals continue to multiply despite steadfast federal opposition? Because the law and the science are both on their side, proponents say. And because it’s just fair.

“Climate superfund laws are based on the principle that if you make a mess, you clean it up,” said Jamie Flynn, a visiting fellow at the Conservation Law Foundation. “It’s kindergarten-level ethics.”

States, municipalities, and tribal governments have tried a variety of strategies for holding oil and gas companies responsible for the problems created by their products. Some have sued, accusing fossil fuel interests of deceiving the public or investors by concealing the hazards of burning hydrocarbons. Others have filed antitrust cases, accusing major companies of colluding to dominate the market, leaving customers locked into climate-damaging products.

Climate superfund laws take a different, arguably more practical approach, by pointing to very visible storm and flooding impacts, and demanding compensation. While the details vary from state to state, climate superfund bills all have a similar framework. They call for the state to tally up expenses incurred by climate change — which could include both recovery costs and protective measures — and then to divide the total among major fossil fuel suppliers and start collecting the money.

The money collected would alleviate the burden on taxpayers by repaying states for past recovery efforts — the cleanup Vermont had to undergo after catastrophic flooding in 2023, for example — and by covering future resilience projects, like wetlands restoration.

“Taxpayers right now are footing the bill for all of it,” said Rhode Island state Rep. Jennifer Boylan, a Democrat, one of the sponsors of the state’s bill. “The folks that are responsible are not contributing, and it’s just not fair.”

Opponents — which include fossil fuel companies, attorneys general from oil-producing states, and, of course, the Trump administration — have deployed several arguments against these laws.

The broadest is that these measures interfere with the federal government’s attempts to unleash American energy dominance by penalizing fossil fuel companies. Others claim that consumers would see prices go up as a result of the added costs. They also argue that the laws constitute an attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which has historically been under federal authority.

It’s also worth noting that superfund laws make sense only if you accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet and thus leading to more destructive weather. The Trump administration rejects this premise. Last Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency repealed the scientific finding that greenhouse gases are a harm to public health and welfare, which has underpinned the federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases for the last 16 years.

Still, lawmakers and advocates behind these bills believe that the law backs them up.

Climate superfund laws are modeled on the federal Superfund program, which was established in 1980 to hold corporations financially accountable for cleaning up soil contamination they had caused. The program was challenged repeatedly, but courts upheld the law time and again — a precedent that is encouraging to proponents of climate superfund legislation.

“You can see why this law was attractive when thinking about greenhouse gas emissions and climate,” said Kirt Mayland, a visiting professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. “The hope is that courts will provide the same protection as they did for the conventional Superfund.”

The strength of this approach, he said, is that the laws and bills do not target federally regulated emissions, despite opponents’ claims. Climate superfund bills focus not on what’s happening in the atmosphere but rather on what’s happening on the ground: observably flooded towns and storm-damaged businesses.

Opponents have played up concerns that it would be difficult to accurately quantify the contributions greenhouse gases make to climate change and then properly allocate responsibility among multiple parties. Supporters, however, say there are ways to do just that.

The Carbon Majors Database is a collection of data about the historic emissions of 178 of the world’s largest oil, gas, coal, and cement producers, including private and public companies as well as entire countries. Using this information, the growing field of attribution science can connect emissions to climate impacts and even, in some cases, to specific storms, heat waves, or other extreme weather events, said Carly Phillips, a research scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The science is really robust around the magnitude and scope of emissions that can be traced,” she said. “It really provides a template to answer those kinds of questions.”

Phillips said that she would welcome engagement and dialogue around the science, but that she is not hearing any good-faith skepticism from opponents. Instead, she sees only a wholesale rejection of attribution science, aimed, she believes, at delaying climate action as long as possible.

The lawsuits targeting New York and Vermont will take some time to resolve, and are likely to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, Mayland said. In the meantime, neither state has yet assessed any charges under the laws. Still, continuing to push these new bills, even in the face of federal and industry hostility, could increase their eventual chances of success, proponents say.

In Rhode Island, where climate superfund legislation has been introduced for a second year in a row, lawmakers are learning more about how the proposal works, and the idea is gaining support, Boylan said. Ongoing conversations about the idea will help pave the way for adoption when some of the legal questions are resolved, said Connecticut state Rep. Steve Winter, a Democrat who plans to support his state’s climate superfund bill.

“There’s no doubt that legal challenges to Vermont and New York’s legislation create a cloud of uncertainty, but I don’t think that should stop us from advancing the public conversation,” he said. “It’s that important.”

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Where’s New York on climate goals? Falling behind.

Feb 20, 2026

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.

President Donald Trump has all but dismantled U.S. efforts to curb pollution that’s warming the planet and harming human health.

Yet with every federal blow to climate action, states have launched a counterpunch. Take Colorado: After Trump and congressional Republicans ended federal EV tax credits, the state juiced its own clean-car incentives. California has meanwhile inked a deal with the United Kingdom to cooperate on clean energy and climate efforts. And several other states are considering “climate superfund” laws, which seek to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for climate change–induced damages.

But instead of doubling down on decarbonization in this critical hour, and despite touting that it has one of the most ambitious climate laws in the country, New York is quietly backing away from its efforts.

The most recent and symbolically loaded move concerns that very same climate law, the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. New York’s utility regulator is currently considering suspending its marquee clean-energy goal, which requires the state to get 70% of its power from renewables by 2030 and 100% by 2040.

To be clear, New York is not on track to meet this target anyway. But behind the proposed rollback is a petition, signed by two natural gas company veterans, which claims that the target will jeopardize grid reliability, Gothamist reports. New York’s grid operator has cautioned that power shortfalls are a mounting risk, but environmental advocates point out that the warning doesn’t take a ton of soon-to-connect clean energy projects into account. That includes two offshore wind projects that have been slowed by the Trump administration.

It’s just the latest climate retreat by Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is up for reelection this year.

Last year, New York was poised to implement a first-of-its-kind ban on fossil-fueled heating and appliances in new homes and buildings. But in November, just before the rule was set to take effect, the state said it wouldn’t enforce the regulation while a lawsuit continued to play out.

Hochul has also repeatedly delayed the implementation of the cap-and-invest program that’s essential to New York’s emissions goals, leaving what could be billions of dollars for renewables construction and energy-efficiency projects in limbo.

And while Hochul has called for more clean energy and nuclear power to meet rising demand, she has also signaled natural gas is essential to the state’s energy strategy, as she allowed a previously rejected pipeline to move forward.

Hochul’s motive for most of these moves has been clear: She’s worried about rising power prices in the state and has cited a need to “govern in reality” amid the federal government’s clean energy assault. But as a warming climate puts New York and the rest of the world increasingly at risk, running in the wrong direction on decarbonization is anything but governing in reality.

Clean energy news to know this week

Another coal-plant prop-up: Documents indicate that the Trump administration will move to let coal plants emit more hazardous pollutants, including mercury, in an attempt to juice the industry. (New York Times)

Chillin’ with Duke Energy: Canary reporter Elizabeth Ouzts let North Carolina utility Duke Energy remotely lower her thermostat in exchange for bill credits, and even in a recent cold spell, Ouzts says she found the savings meaningful. (Canary Media)

Illinois’ nuclear reversal: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) calls for the state to build at least 2 gigawatts of nuclear capacity, just a month after lifting the state’s long-standing moratorium on nuclear construction. (Bloomberg)

Cancer Alley’s new threat: Louisiana residents already saturated with petrochemical pollution now face a wave of “blue ammonia” plants, which will burn fossil fuels and potentially saddle them with even more emissions. (Floodlight)

Power surge: 2025 was a tough year for clean energy in the U.S., but grid batteries still set another installation record as more solar power came online and power demand rose. (Canary Media)

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What does Admin’s repeal of US ‘endangerment finding’ mean for climate action?

Feb 16, 2026

On 12 February, US president Donald Trump revoked the “endangerment finding”, the bedrock of federal climate policy.

The 2009 finding concluded that six key greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), were a threat to human health – triggering a legal requirement to regulate them.

It has been key to the rollout of policies such as federal emission standards for vehicles, power plants, factories and other sources.

Speaking at the White House, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin claimed that the “elimination” of the endangerment finding would save “trillions”.

The revocation is expected to face multiple legal challenges, but, if it succeeds, it is expected to have a “sweeping” impact on federal emissions regulations for many years.

Nevertheless, US emissions are expected to continue falling, albeit at a slower pace.

Carbon Brief takes a look at what the endangerment finding was, how it has shaped US climate policy in the past and what its repeal could mean for action in the future.

What is the ‘endangerment finding’?

The challenges of passing climate legislation in the US have meant that the federal government has often turned instead to regulations – principally, under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

The act requires the EPA to regulate pollutants, if they are found to pose a danger to public health and the environment.

In a 2007 legal case known as Massachusetts vs EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. It also directed the EPA to determine whether these gases posed a threat to human health.

The 2009 “endangerment finding” was the result of this process and found that greenhouse gas emissions do indeed pose such a threat. Subsequently, it has underpinned federal emissions regulations for more than 15 years.

In developing the endangerment finding, the EPA pulled together evidence from its own experts, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the wider scientific community.

On 7 December 2009, it concluded that US greenhouse gas emissions “in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations”.

In particular, the finding highlighted six “well-mixed” greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O); hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); perfluorocarbons (PFCs); and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).

A second part of the finding stated that new vehicles contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that endangers public health and welfare, opening the door to these emissions being regulated.

At the time, the EPA noted that, while the finding itself does not impose any requirements on industry or other entities, “this action was a prerequisite for implementing greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles and other sectors”.

On 15 December 2009, the finding was published in the federal register – the official record of US federal legislation – and the final rule came into effect on 14 January 2010.

At the time, then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement:

“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President [Barack] Obama’s call for a low-carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation.

“This pollution problem has a solution – one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

How has it shaped federal climate policy?

The endangerment finding originated from a part of the Clean Air Act regulating emissions from new vehicles and so it was first applied in that sector.

However, it came to underpin greenhouse gas emission regulation across a range of sectors.

In May 2010, shortly after the Obama EPA finalised the finding, it was used to set the country’s first-ever limits on greenhouse gas emissions from light-duty engines in motor vehicles.

The following year, the EPA also released emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles and engines.

However, findings made under one part of the Clean Air Act can also be applied to other articles of the law. David Widawsky, director of the US programme at the World Resources Institute (WRI), tells Carbon Brief:

“You can take that finding – and that scientific basis and evidence – and apply it in other instances where air pollutants are subject or required to be regulated under the Clean Air Act or other statutes.

“Revoking the endangerment finding then creates a thread that can be pulled out of not just vehicles, but a whole lot of other [sources].”

Since being entered into the federal register, the endangerment finding has also been applied to stationary sources of emissions, such as fossil-fuelled power plants and factories, as well as an expanded range of non-stationary emissions sources, including aviation.

(In fact, the EPA is compelled to regulate emissions of a pollutant – such as CO2 as identified in the endangerment finding – from stationary sources, once it has been regulated anywhere else under the Clean Air Act.)

In 2015, the EPA finalised its guidance on regulating emissions from fossil-fuelled power plants. These performance standards applied to newly constructed plants, as well as those that underwent major modifications.

This ruling noted that “because the EPA is not listing a new source category in this rule, the EPA is not required to make a new endangerment finding…in order to establish standards of performance for the CO2”.

The following year, the agency established rules on methane emissions from oil and gas sources, including wells and processing plants. Again, this was based on the 2009 finding.

The 2016 aircraft endangerment finding also explicitly references the vehicle-emissions endangerment finding. That rule says that the “body of scientific evidence amassed in the record for the 2009 endangerment finding also compellingly supports an endangerment finding” for aircraft.

The endangerment finding has also played a critical role in shaping the trajectory of climate litigation in the US.

In a 2011 case, American Electric Power Co. vs Connecticut, the Supreme Court unanimously found that, because greenhouse gas emissions were already regulated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, companies could not be sued under federal common law over their greenhouse gas emissions.

Widawsky tells Carbon Brief that repealing the endangerment finding therefore “opens the door” to climate litigation of other kinds:

“When plaintiffs would introduce litigation in federal courts, the answer or the courts would find that EPA is ‘handling it’ and there’s not necessarily a basis for federal litigation. By removing the endangerment finding…it actually opens the door to the question – not necessarily successful litigation – and the courts will make that determination.”

How is the finding being repealed and will it face legal challenge?

The official revocation of the endangerment finding – initially posted to the EPA’s website – was published in the federal register on 18 February.

It states that the ruling will be effective from 20 April.

It is set to face no shortage of legal challenges. The state of California has “vowed” to sue, as have a number of environmental groups, including Sierra Club, Earthjustice and the National Resources Defense Council.

Dena Adler, an adjunct professor of law at New York University School of Law, tells Carbon Brief there are “significant legal and analytical vulnerabilities” in the EPA’s ruling. She explains:

“This repeal will only stick if it can survive legal challenge in the courts. But it could take months, if not years, to get a final judicial decision.”

At the heart of the federal agency’s argument is that it claims to lack the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in response to “global climate change concerns” under the Clean Air Act.

In the ruling, the EPA says the section of the Act focused on vehicle emissions is “best read” as authorising the agency to regulate air pollution that harms the public through “local or regional exposure” – for instance, smog or acid rain – but not pollution from “well-mixed” greenhouse gases that, it claims, “impact public health and welfare only indirectly”.

This distinction directly contradicts the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts vs EPA. (See: What is the ‘endangerment finding’?)

The EPA’s case also rests on an argument that the agency violated the “major questions doctrine” when it started regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

This legal principle holds that federal agencies need explicit authorisation from Congress to press ahead with actions in certain “extraordinary” cases.

In a policy brief in January, legal experts from New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity argued that the “major questions doctrine” argument “fails for several reasons”.

Regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is “neither unheralded nor transformative” – both of which are needed for the legal principle to apply, the lawyers said.

Furthermore, the policy brief noted that – even if the doctrine were triggered – the Clean Air Act does, in fact, supply the EPA with the “clear authority” required.

Mark Drajem, director of public affairs at NRDC, says the endangerment finding has been “firmly established in the courts”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“In 2007, the Supreme Court directed EPA to look at the science and determine if greenhouse gases pose a risk to human health and welfare. EPA did that in 2009 and federal courts rejected a challenge to that in 2012.

“Since then, the Supreme Court has considered EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations three separate times and never questioned whether it has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. It has only ruled on how it can regulate that pollution.”

However, experts have noted that the Trump administration is banking on legal challenges making their way to the Supreme Court – and the now conservative-leaning bench then upholding the repeal of the endangerment finding.

Elsewhere, the EPA’s new ruling argues that regulating emissions from vehicles has “no material impact on global climate change concerns…much less the adverse public health or welfare impacts attributed to such global climate trends”.

“Climate impact modelling”, it continues, shows that “even the complete elimination of all greenhouse gas emissions” of vehicles in the US would have impacts that fall “within the standard margin of error” for global temperature and sea level rise.

In this context, it argues, regulations on emissions are “futile”.

(The US is more historically responsible for climate change than any other country. In its 2022 sixth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that further delaying action to cut emissions would “miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.)

However, the final rule stops short of attempting to justify the plans by disputing the scientific basis for climate change.

Notably, the EPA has abandoned plans to rely on the findings of a controversial climate science report commissioned by the Department of Energy (DoE) last year.

This is a marked departure from the draft ruling, published in August, which argued there were “significant questions and ambiguities presented by both the observable realities of the past nearly two decades and the recent findings of the scientific community, including those summarised in the draft CWG [‘climate working group’] report”.

The CWG report – written by five researchers known for rejecting the scientific consensus on human influence on global warming – faced significant criticism for inaccurate conclusions and a flawed review process. (Carbon Brief’s factcheck found more than 100 misleading or false statements in the report.)

A judge ruled in January that the DoE had broken the law when energy secretary Chris Wright “hand-picked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming”, according to the New York Times.

In a press release in July, the EPA said “updated studies and information” set out in the CWG report would serve to “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.

But, in the footnotes to its final ruling, the EPA notes it is not relying on the report for “any aspect of this final action” in light of “concerns raised by some commenters”.

Legal experts have argued that the pivot away from arguments undermining climate science is designed with future legal battles over the attempted repeal in mind.

What does this mean for federal efforts to address climate change?

As mentioned above, a number of groups have already filed legal actions against the Trump administration’s move to repeal the endangerment finding – leaving the future uncertain.

However, if the repeal does survive legal challenges, it would have far-reaching implications for federal efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions, experts say.

In a blog post, the WRI’s Widawsky said that the repeal would have a “sweeping” impact on federal emissions regulations for cars, coal-fired power stations and gas power plants, adding:

“In practical terms, without the endangerment finding, regulating greenhouse gas emissions is no longer a legal requirement. The science hasn’t changed, but the obligation to act on it has been removed.”

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Widawsky adds that, despite this large immediate impact, there are “a lot of mechanisms” future US administrations might be able to pursue if they wanted to reinstate the federal government’s obligation to address greenhouse gas emissions:

“Probably the most direct way – rather than talk about ‘pollutants’, in general, and the EPA, say, making a science-specific finding for that pollutant – [is] for Congress simply to declare a particular pollutant to be a hazard for human health and welfare. [This] has been done in other instances.”

If federal efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions decline, there will likely still be attempts to regulate at the state level.

Previous analysis from the University of Oxford noted that, despite a walkback on federal climate policy in Trump’s second presidential term, 19 US states – covering nearly half of the country’s population – remain committed to net-zero targets.

Widawksy tells Carbon Brief that it is possible that states may be able to leverage legislation, including the Clean Air Act, to enact regulations to address emissions at the state level.

However, in some cases, states may be prevented from doing so by “preemption”, a US legal doctrine where higher-level federal laws override lower-level state laws, he adds:

“There are a whole lot of other sections of the Clean Air Act that may either inhibit that kind of ability for states to act through preemption or allow for that to happen.”

What has the reaction been?

The Trump administration’s decision has received widespread global condemnation, although it has been celebrated by some right-wing newspapers, politicians and commentators.

In the US, former US president Barack Obama said on Twitter that the move will leave Americans “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change – all so the fossil-fuel industry can make even more money”.

Similarly, California governor Gavin Newsom called the decision “reckless”, arguing that it will lead to “more deadly wildfires, more extreme heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts and greater threats to communities nationwide”.

Former US secretary of state and climate envoy John Kerry called the decision “un-American”, according to a story on the frontpage of the Guardian. He continued:

“[It] takes Orwellian governance to new heights and invites enormous damage to people and property around the world.”

An editorial in the Guardian dubbed the repeal as “just one part of Trump’s assault on environmental controls and promotion of fossil fuels”, but added that it “may be his most consequential”.

Similarly, an editorial in the Hindu said that Trump is “trying to turn back the clock on environmental issues”.

In China, state-run news agency Xinhua published a cartoon depicting Uncle Sam attempting to turn an ageing car, marked “US climate policy”, away from the road marked “green development”, back towards a city engulfed in flames and pollution that swells towards dark clouds labelled “greenhouse gas catastrophe”.

Conversely, Trump described the finding as “the legal foundation for the green new scam”, which he claimed “the Obama and Biden administration used to destroy countless jobs”.

Similarly, Al Jazeera reported that EPA administrator Zeldin said the endangerment finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the US economy, including the American auto industry”. The outlet quoted him saying:

“The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”

An editorial in the Washington Post also praises the move, saying “it’s about time” that the endangerment finding was revoked. It argued – without evidence – that the benefits of regulating emissions are “modest” and that “free-market-driven innovation has done more to combat climate change than regulatory power grabs like the ‘endangerment finding’ ever did”.

The Heritage Foundation – the climate-sceptic US lobby group that published the influential “Project 2025” document before Trump took office – has also celebrated the decision.

Time reported that the group previously criticised the endangerment finding, saying that it was used to “justify sweeping restrictions on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions across the economy, imposing huge costs”. The magazine added that Project 2025 laid out plans to “establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding”.

Climate scientists have also weighed in on the administration’s repeal efforts. Prof Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station, argued that there is “no legitimate scientific rationale” for the EPA decision.

Similarly, Dr Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said in a statement that, since the establishment of the 2009 endangerment finding, the evidence showing greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and the environment “has only grown stronger”.

Dr Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former White House official, gave a statement, arguing that “ramming through this unlawful, destructive action at the behest of polluters is an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok”.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute, wrote that Trump is “slowing climate progress”, but that “it won’t put a stop to global climate action”. They added:

“The rest of the world is moving on and thanks to Trump’s ridiculous insistence that climate change is a ‘hoax’, the US now stands to lose out in the great economic revolution of the modern era – the clean-energy transition.”

What will the repeal mean for US emissions?

Federal regulations and standards underpinned by the endangerment finding have been at the heart of US government plans to reduce the nation’s emissions.

For example, NRDC analysis of EPA data suggests that Biden-era vehicle standards, combined with other policies to boost electric cars, were set to avoid nearly 8bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) over the next three decades.

By removing the legal requirement to regulate greenhouse gases at a federal level from such high-emitting sectors, the EPA could instead be driving higher emissions.

Nevertheless, some climate experts argue that the repeal is more of a “symbolic” action and that EPA regulations have not historically been the main drivers of US emissions cuts.

Rhodium Group analysis last year estimated the impact of the EPA removing 31 regulatory policies, including the endangerment finding and “actions that rely on that finding”. Most of these had already been proposed for repeal independently by the Trump administration.

Ben King, the organisation’s climate and energy director, tells Carbon Brief this “has the same effect on the system as repealing the endangerment finding”.

The Rhodium Group concluded that, in this scenario, emissions would continue falling to 26-35% below 2005 levels by 2035, as the chart below shows. If the regulations remained in place, it estimated that emissions would fall faster, by around 32-44%.

(Notably, neither of these scenarios would be in line with the Biden administration’s international climate pledge, which was a 61-66% reduction by 2035).

US emissions, MtCO2e, under a “current policy” scenario in which the EPA removes key federal climate regulations (“without climate regulations”) and a “no rollbacks” scenario in which regulations remain in place (“with climate regulations”). High, mid and low ranges reflect uncertainty around future fossil-fuel prices, economic growth, clean-energy technology costs and growth in liquified natural gas (LNG) export capacity. Source: Rhodium Group.

There are various factors that could contribute to continued – albeit slower – decline in US emissions, in the absence of federal regulations. These include falling costs for clean technologies, higher fossil-fuel prices and state-level legislation.

Despite Trump’s rhetoric, coal plants have become uneconomic to operate in the US compared with cheaper renewables and gas. As a result, Trump has overseen a larger reduction in coal-fired capacity than any other US president.

Meanwhile, in spite of the openly hostile policy environment, relatively low-cost US wind and solar projects are competitive with gas power and are still likely to be built in large numbers.

The vast majority of new US power capacity in recent years has been solar, wind and storage. Around 92% of power projects seeking electricity interconnection in the US are solar, wind and storage, with the remainder nearly all gas.

The broader transition to low-carbon transport is well underway in the US, with electric vehicle sales breaking records during nearly every month in 2025.

This can partly be attributed to federal tax credits, which the Trump administration is now cutting. However, cheaper models, growing consumer preference and state policies are likely to continue strengthening support.

Even if emissions continue on a downward trajectory, repealing the endangerment finding could make it harder to drive more ambitious climate action in the future. Some climate experts also point to the uncertainty of future emissions reductions.

“[It] depends on a number of technology, policy, economic and behavioural factors. Other folks are less sanguine about greenhouse gas declines,” WRI’s Widawsky tells Carbon Brief.

19/02/2026: This article was updated to include information about the publication of the official revocation of the endangerment finding in the federal register.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show had a big message about Puerto Rico’s grid

Feb 9, 2026

When music superstar Bad Bunny climbed an electric pole during the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, he showcased a painful reality during what was otherwise a joyous celebration of Puerto Rican culture.

Puerto Rico’s power grid has been crumbling for nearly a decade, ever since Hurricanes Irma and Maria battered the U.S. territory in 2017 and all but destroyed its centralized electricity system. Bad Bunny highlights the ailing grid in his 2022 song “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”), which he sang yesterday from a sparking utility pole in a show seen by perhaps 135 million viewers.

Despite billions of federal recovery dollars and post-hurricane repairs, Puerto Rico’s 3.2 million residents continue to endure widespread disruptions, electrical surges, and soaring electricity rates — even on storm-free days. Utility customers in Puerto Rico experienced an average of 27 hours of power grid interruptions not related to major events like hurricanes per year between 2021 and 2024. By contrast, people living on the U.S. mainland lacked power for an average of just two hours per year, according to federal data.

Yet rather than invest in Puerto Rico’s recovery, the Trump administration is clawing back key federal funding meant to modernize and decarbonize the territory’s electricity system.

In January, the Department of Energy canceled $450 million for grid resilience programs in Puerto Rico, Latitude Media recently reported. The clawback effectively marks the end of the $1 billion Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund that the Biden administration launched in 2023 to help keep people’s lights on and their schools open, hospitals running, and supermarkets stocked.

President Donald Trump’s DOE had previously redirected $365 million of that funding meant for rooftop solar and battery storage projects toward “practical fixes and emergency activities.” To the administration, that means doubling down on the old model: far-flung power plants fueled by coal, oil, and gas, which send electricity along transmission lines that crisscross the island — and which were mercilessly mowed down during last decade’s hurricanes.

But some energy experts and community leaders say that approach is impractical. They argue that building clean and distributed energy systems close to population centers is the best way to supply Puerto Ricans with reliable, affordable power that can withstand natural disasters.

Rooftop solar systems with batteries have already become a lifeline for residents and community groups across the archipelago. Amid a power-generation shortfall last July, Puerto Rico’s grid operator relied on customers’ batteries to prevent the grid from collapsing.

As of June 2025, 1.2 gigawatts of grid-connected rooftop solar were installed on homes and businesses, supplying more than 10% of the total energy used, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. That tally doesn’t include the many off-grid systems that people have installed to shore up their own resiliency.

Still, many low- and moderate-income households aren’t able to access the benefits of clean, distributed energy, a challenge that the federal programs were meant to help address. Advocates are still pressing ahead. Casa Pueblo, a community organization in Puerto Rico, recently released a study that outlines how more people can be brought into the fold with “microgrids” — groups of solar panels and batteries that serve entire districts or neighborhoods, not just individual buildings.

In 2023, Casa Pueblo launched one of Puerto Rico’s first microgrids in the tranquil mountain town of Adjuntas. The initiative has since expanded to include five small systems in Adjuntas that serve a handful of residences and 15 businesses, including La Conquista Laundry. Nicky Vázquez, who owns the laundromat, said he’s seen an 80% reduction in his electricity bill and had no power outages since joining the microgrid in mid-2025.

“Now I have stability, I don’t run out of power, and I can continue to provide service,” Vázquez said in a statement provided by Casa Pueblo.

Yesterday’s Super Bowl was hardly the first time that Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has spoken out about Puerto Rico’s power struggles. Last April, when the territory was once again plunged into darkness, he asked on social media: “¿Cuando vamos a hacer algo?” When are we going to do something?

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Loss of green smelter highlights Kentucky’s need for clean electricity

Feb 10, 2026

When I first met John Holbrook at his office in northeastern Kentucky, the region seemed to be on the cusp of a revival. It was a scorching summer day in 2024, and Century Aluminum was considering building an enormous smelter in this corner of Appalachia — one that would create thousands of jobs in an area where employment was steadily drying up.

Holbrook, who heads the Tri-State Building and Construction Trades Council, called the $5 billion project a “life-changing” opportunity. He’d joined a coalition of labor organizers, environmentalists, and local officials who supported Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s attempt to hammer out an agreement to supply Century’s new smelter with clean electricity.

Two weeks ago, Century finally announced its plans. The Chicago-based manufacturer said it will build an aluminum plant in Oklahoma instead, in partnership with Emirates Global Aluminium. The jointly developed facility will be America’s first new smelter since 1980 — and the largest in the country — if completed as planned by the end of the decade.

“It’s very disappointing for the Kentucky craftspeople that I represent,” Holbrook said recently on a video call from his office in Ashland, which was blanketed in ice from a major winter storm. “It’s tough,” he added. “But we are resilient people.”

The news of Century’s decision had barely sunk in for Kentuckians when the company made another surprising announcement.

Last week, Century said it had sold its idled Hawesville smelter in western Kentucky to a data center company, squashing any possibility that the aluminum plant would be restarted. The developer, TeraWulf, will now have access to the site’s 480 megawatts of existing grid capacity for bitcoin mining and high-performance computing — tasks that are less sensitive to power prices than smelting aluminum.

When Century shut down production in Hawesville in 2022, cutting more than 600 jobs, the company pointed to “skyrocketing energy costs” as the primary reason.

Energy has always been the Achilles’ heel of smelters.

The facilities consume tremendous amounts of electricity to transform raw materials into a versatile metal that’s used in cars, planes, power cables, solar panels, and beverage cans. Producers must secure long-term contracts with utilities for affordable, reliable power in order to compete in global markets. But those deals are hard to come by, and smelters that rely on fossil fuel–heavy grids are particularly vulnerable to spikes in coal and gas prices.

For its new smelter, Century had been scouting locations where it could access not only competitive rates but also ample supplies of carbon-free electricity. In 2024, the company was awarded up to $500 million from the Biden administration’s Department of Energy to build a “modern, low-emission” facility as part of a broader federal effort to demonstrate cleaner manufacturing technologies for domestic industries.

It’s unclear whether the terms of Century’s grant have changed under the Trump administration, which is propping up aging coal plants as it works to block renewable-energy projects. But Century recently pointed to Oklahoma’s abundant wind generation and solar power potential in explaining its decision to partner with Emirates Global Aluminium on a smelter near Tulsa.

“Oklahoma is very well located, from a total energy perspective,” Matt Aboud, Century’s senior vice president of strategy and business development, said during a Feb. 2 panel at the S&P Global Aluminum Symposium in Miami.

“Yes, this administration is very much promoting fossil fuels and very much de-emphasizing renewables. But you have to take a 30-to-50-year horizon,” he said. “Ultimately, to really operate a smelter here [in the U.S.], you need an energy strategy that incorporates all the different fuel mixes.”

Aboud didn’t mention Kentucky. But for clean energy advocates, the decision to build in Oklahoma and not the Bluegrass State felt like an indictment of Kentucky’s power system. Coal-fired power plants supplied 67% of the state’s electricity generation in 2024, and gas plants generated another 26%. Hydroelectric dams provided most of the rest, though dozens of solar projects are in development, including ones atop old mining sites.

“Kentucky needs to learn from this and understand that our infrastructure, too, is an economic development tool,” said Elisa Owen, a Louisville-based senior energy organizer with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “We cannot remain invested in 19^th-century energy if we want to attract 21^st-century business. It’s just as simple as that.”

She said her focus now is ensuring that Century’s last smelter in the state, Sebree, continues operating for years to come. That means pressuring state officials and legislators to usher more renewables onto the grid. “If we understand that Century needs clean energy to be viable in the United States, then that is a story we can tell in Kentucky,” she said. “The Oklahoma smelter snafu needs to be a wake-up call.”

Gov. Beshear, a Democrat, stressed the need to diversify Kentucky’s energy mix in response to Century’s Oklahoma pivot. But GOP state legislators in recent years have adopted measures — Senate Bills 4 and 349 — that are designed to prolong the life of fossil-fueled power plants and make it harder to build renewable energy projects in their place. Opponents of the rules, including investor-owned utilities and manufacturing groups, have warned that the restrictions will jeopardize grid reliability and increase energy costs.

The Kentucky Resources Council and a coalition of other nonprofit groups commissioned an independent study to examine the lawmakers’ claims that relying on fossil fuels is the only way to ensure an affordable, reliable grid. The analysis, by Current Energy Group, found that Kentucky is presently pursuing a high-cost, high-risk path by keeping uneconomic coal plants running and hamstringing efforts to pursue alternatives.

Researchers identified the “least-cost” strategy as one that involves building renewable energy capacity, deploying energy storage, and adding demand-side resources like energy-efficiency programs and rooftop solar to reduce pressure on the utility grid. Using these cleaner resources to replace coal-fired power could save Kentucky customers $2.6 billion by 2050, according to the report, published in December.

This approach is also considered the lowest risk, given that a costly, dirty grid threatens to push out more industries, and since it leaves utilities vulnerable should the state or country ever decide to penalize carbon-dioxide emissions, said Byron Gary, an attorney at the Kentucky Resources Council who helped spearhead the report.

He said that the analysis didn’t include Century’s new smelter when modeling the state’s future power demand. But it did assume that some of the data centers proposed for Kentucky will get built, further increasing the need for carbon-free, lower-cost electricity resources — “which Kentucky clearly doesn’t have right now,” Gary said.

Pro-coal policymakers have framed the AI boom as a godsend for Kentucky’s long-suffering mining industry, as the massive facilities will need lots of around-the-clock power. For now, though, the biggest winner seems to be fossil gas. Last fall, state lawmakers gave Kentucky’s largest utility approval to spend $3 billion on building 1.3 gigawatts’ worth of new gas power capacity to serve future hyperscalers.

Still, that power likely won’t be online anytime soon, given order backlogs: Just getting the turbines needed for new gas plants can take three to five years. By contrast, large-scale solar and wind projects represent the lowest-cost and fastest path to add power to the grid, experts say.

Many residents are pushing back against data centers over concerns of how the megaprojects will affect farmland and raise living costs and electricity prices. For environmentalists who were hoping for a new green smelter, or who were surprised by Hawesville’s rebirth as a server farm, the tech infrastructure is little consolation.

Lane Boldman, executive director of the Kentucky Conservation Committee, said she doesn’t think that data centers will revitalize the state’s hard-hit industrial and mining communities in the same way that the Department of Energy had initially intended when awarding Century’s $500 million smelter grant.

“What the Biden administration had been trying to do with a lot of these grants was not just to provide economic development or drive cleaner technology but also to do something to restore communities that had been working in the energy sector before, so that they’re not abandoned,” she said.

“You want to be able to bring the communities along in that transition,” she added. “And what they will now get instead is either nothing or a data center, and that just wasn’t the plan.”

Holbrook, for his part, said he welcomes the potential influx of data centers in Kentucky and the regions of Ohio and West Virginia that his tristate labor council represents. As he sees it, the multibillion-dollar developments could provide well-paying construction jobs for the next decade and beyond as tech companies expand their footprints.

“We’re trying to embrace it, and we want to be at the table and building these campuses,” he said. “You kind of have to dance with the person that brought you. So that’s how we are with this situation.”

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The EPA’s biggest emissions-fighting tool is dead — at least for now

Feb 13, 2026

This analysis and news roundup come from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday.

“🚨Single. Largest. Deregulatory. Action. EVER. Incoming: TOMORROW!”

That quote comes from an X post made by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Wednesday. Sure enough, the next day, Zeldin officially unveiled the subject of this WrestleMania-esque hype: The Trump administration has revoked the scientific basis for the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in America.

For 16 years, a scientific determination known as the “endangerment finding” has served as the backbone of U.S. policies to reduce emissions, allowing the EPA to put limits on planet-warming and health-harming pollution from vehicles, power plants, and other industrial sources of greenhouse gases.

There’s no doubt this will go to the courts. In fact, the finding itself has its roots in the legal system. Back in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act — but only if the agency found that the gases were a threat to public health and welfare. In 2009, the EPA furnished overwhelming evidence in support of that point.

As The New York Times reports, a court battle seems to be precisely what the Trump administration wants. That would allow its lawyers to try to convince the conservative-majority Supreme Court to overturn the 2007 decision, thus dealing a more lasting blow to climate policy, as opposed to revoking the endangerment finding, which a Democratic administration would swiftly reverse.

There’s a reason the administration is relying on a legal strategy rather than contesting the science, Inside Climate News points out: The Trump EPA’s attempts to argue with the climate science have been “laughed out of the room,” Meredith Hankins, legal director for NRDC’s federal climate program, told the publication. (This has not stopped top Trump officials like Interior Secretary Doug Burgum from insisting on Fox News, in between breathless praise of “beautiful, clean coal,” that CO2 is merely plant food.)

Environmental advocates unanimously blasted the decision, highlighting how it would not only harm efforts to fight climate change, but threaten public health and affordability, too.

“Most people have never heard of this safeguard — the ‘endangerment’ finding — but repealing it sends a clear message: this government doesn’t care,” David Widawsky, U.S. director of research group World Resources Institute, said in a statement. “The bottom line is that repealing these protections will make everyday life more expensive, more risky and more uncertain for Americans.”

A quick analysis from the research firm Rhodium Group attempted to quantify the exact impact the decision will have on U.S. climate efforts. It found that national emissions will still fall even if the finding is permanently repealed, thanks to the rapid growth of cheap clean energy, but that decarbonization will be more sluggish.

Put simply, repealing the endangerment finding will slow climate progress at the exact moment the world needs it to speed up.

Clean energy news to know this week

Spinning up success: Offshore wind performed as well as gas power plants and better than coal in January, shoring up the Northeast’s power grid through a brutal cold spell. (Canary Media)

The offshore wind fight continues: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the Trump administration plans to appeal five rulings that allowed offshore wind farm construction to continue. (Bloomberg)

Natural gas disconnect: Experts say the Trump administration’s push to expand natural gas exports doesn’t mesh with its promise to curb skyrocketing power prices back in the U.S. (Canary Media)

Coal’s mounting cost: The net cost of keeping a Michigan coal plant open has reached $135 million since President Trump ordered the facility to stay online in May 2025. (MLive)

Powerful pivot: At least 10 North American EV battery plants are being revamped to instead produce grid batteries for energy storage systems. (Financial Times)

Renewables under attack: A bill making its way through Ohio’s legislature would essentially ban wind and solar development in the state — one of several similar attempts around the U.S. (Canary Media)

Heat-pump troubleshooting: Icy crusts kept some heat pumps from performing their best during recent bouts of extreme cold, but experts recommend owners take a few easy steps ahead of storms to keep their systems running. (Canary Media)

Data center crackdown: The White House has reportedly drafted a pact with tech giants that would have them make public commitments to ensure that their data centers don’t raise household power prices, stress water supplies, or hurt grid reliability. (Politico)

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Colorado co-ops to Admin: Let us close our aging coal plant

Feb 3, 2026

The Trump administration is facing lawsuits from states and environmental groups opposing its use of emergency power to force aging coal plants to stay online. Now, add utilities to its list of challengers.

Last week, the cooperative utilities Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority filed a petition asking the Department of Energy to reconsider its December order demanding that they keep running Craig Generating Station’s Unit 1, a jointly owned coal plant in Colorado, for the next 90 days.

Tri-State and Platte River — along with co-owners Salt River Project, PacifiCorp, and Xcel Energy — have been preparing to close the plant since 2016, both to comply with Colorado’s plan to shutter all coal generation by 2030 and to replace an aging and increasingly expensive source of power. Forcing them to operate it past December will require their members to bear unnecessary costs, which constitutes an “uncompensated taking” of their property in violation of the Constitution, the petition argues.

Tri-State and Platte River operate as nonprofit co-ops, which are owned by the customers they serve, meaning that they cannot pass the cost of keeping a plant open along to a multistate regional transmission network, as for-profit utilities can. Instead, their member-customers need to absorb the entire blow.

The consultancy Grid Strategies has estimated that keeping Craig Unit 1 running for 90 days would cost at least $20 million, and that running it for a year could add up to $85 million to $150 million. The utilities operating Craig Unit 1 have already had to take on the costs of repairing a valve failure that forced the plant offline in December.

It will also disrupt the use of long-planned replacement resources that can provide power more cheaply and reliably than Craig Unit 1 — including the 145-megawatt Axial Basin solar farm, which may be forced to curtail its electricity generation because of grid congestion due to keeping the coal plant online.

“We do not take this request for a rehearing lightly,” Tri-State CEO Duane Highley said in a Thursday press release. “But as not-for-profit entities, we face issues that other utilities do not, because it is our members that ultimately are going to pay for the cost of this order.”

The petition from Tri-State and Platte River marks the first time a utility has publicly contested a Trump administration must-run order, said Michael Lenoff, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm that’s filed challenges and lawsuits against similar orders across the country.

“DOE should listen to utilities on the ground making sure the lights stay on, and not advance its policy to rescue the dying coal industry and force other people — in other words, ratepayers — to pay for it,” he said.

Since last year, the DOE has used its authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to require a Michigan coal plant and an oil- and gas-fired plant in Pennsylvania to stay open for three consecutive 90-day periods. In December, in addition to Craig Unit 1, it issued similar orders for two coal plants in Indiana and one in Washington state.

The DOE has justified the orders by claiming that the power grid faces an imminent, increasing threat of major blackouts. But energy experts refute the idea that such a grid crisis is around the corner, arguing that the Trump administration is relying on a false premise. The true goal, they say, is to misuse emergency authority to benefit the coal industry by forcing customers to continue to pay for power plants that can’t compete economically against much cheaper power from renewables, batteries, and fossil gas.

State attorneys general and environmental groups have filed rehearing requests with the DOE on all of these must-run orders. To date, the DOE has declined to take up those administrative challenges, opening the pathway for challengers to file lawsuits.

In December, a coalition of environmental groups filed a legal brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging DOE’s first Section 202(c) order, for the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan. It asked the court to “put an end to the Department’s continued abuse of its authority, which has imposed millions of dollars in unnecessary costs and pollution on residents of Michigan and the Midwest.”

Indeed, the moves are pushing substantial costs on to utility customers at a time when electricity bills are already rising far faster than inflation. The Sierra Club, which is tracking the costs of keeping coal plants running under DOE emergency orders, estimates the price at just over $202 million as of Monday, up from more than $158 million as of the second week in January.

If the DOE forces the continued operations of every fossil-fueled power plant scheduled to retire between now and the end of 2028, the costs could add up to $4.8 billion, according to a 2025 study by Grid Strategies. Extending the analysis to also include every power plant that is 60 years old or more could increase the cost to nearly $6 billion, the study found.

These costs come in the form of retaining workers, securing new coal supplies, and undertaking maintenance and repairs that were once deferred. And they’re not the only expenses associated with the orders: Utility customers must also pay for the resources that utilities have already secured to replace the closing coal plants.

All these costs will add up if Craig Unit 1 is forced to stay online. “We have planned for the retirement of this resource for over a decade and have proactively replaced the capacity and energy from new sources,” Jason Frisbie, general manager and CEO of Platte River, said in the press release.

In other words, as Matthew Gerhart, senior attorney at the Sierra Club, previously put it to Canary Media, the Trump administration’s actions mean that customers will “end up paying twice.”

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New EU carbon tariff pushes India toward green steel

Jan 26, 2026

Since emerging as the world’s No. 2 producer of steel eight years ago, India has ramped up its exports to Europe. By some estimates, upwards of 60% of the country’s steel exports now head to the European Union.

But India’s steelmakers are poised for what one prominent New Delhi–based business magazine recently referred to as a “wake-up call.”

The EU’s world-first carbon tariff — known as the carbon border adjustment mechanism — took effect this month, forcing companies in the bloc to pay levies on certain imports based on how much planet-warming pollution was emitted during their manufacturing. That means metal from Indian steelmakers — which rely heavily on coal — will come in at a much higher price in the EU.

“Europe is the elephant in the room. It’s a pretty big deal,” said Kaushik Deb, executive director of the India team at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. “It makes it a lot more urgent for India to start thinking about green steel.”

Coal dominates the steelmaking process in much of the world, and especially in India. The traditional method for producing the metal relies on a coal-fired blast furnace to refine iron ore into iron, which is then forged into steel in a basic oxygen furnace. That two-step process accounts for 43% of India’s steel output, according to a June report from Johns Hopkins University’s Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab.

The rest of the nation’s steel is produced in electric arc furnaces or induction furnaces, alternatives to basic oxygen furnaces that melt iron into steel using electricity. But even that equipment depends on iron refined using coal. The fossil fuel also generates upwards of 75% of the power on India’s grid, meaning that ostensibly cleaner methods that use electricity still generate plenty of emissions.

Some steelmakers in India have begun to build out the infrastructure for direct reduced iron, a cleaner method of making iron than relying on coal-burning blast furnaces. But in contrast to American or European DRI facilities, which typically use natural gas or hydrogen, Indian DRI plants often use coal as the input.

The Indian government has started looking to change the trajectory of its coal use. The fossil fuel is making up less and less of the country’s power mix as India installs record amounts of solar panels and wind turbines and embarks on plans to build new nuclear power stations.

In September 2024, India’s Ministry of Steel — the only cabinet-level agency in any major country dedicated just to steel — issued a 420-page report outlining the potential pathways to greening the industry. The report calls for studies into different approaches to slash emissions from steelmaking, including swapping the coal used in DRI for green hydrogen made with renewables and equipping fossil-fueled facilities with carbon-capture equipment. It also proposes studying ways to retrain workers on greener technologies. But the report acknowledges that financing remains a challenge.

“I don’t see the timeline for this happening optimistically,” said Shreyas Shende, the senior research associate at the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab who co-authored last summer’s report. “The issue is the pricing. Green hydrogen has no cost competitiveness. The government is running a few pilot projects, but we have to see if it’s scalable.”

Some private companies in India have started their own decarbonization pilot projects. JSW Steel announced plans in 2022 to spend $1 billion on green steel by 2030, and later expanded the vision via a partnership with the South Korean steelmaker Posco to develop a new green-steel mill.

That same year, industrial behemoth Adani inked its own deal with Posco to develop a $5 billion green-steel facility in the western state of Gujarat.

In 2024, Tata Steel entered the green-steel market with plans for a low-carbon mill in the United Kingdom. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, the giant announced another $1.2 billion investment in a green-steel plant in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

Acting on its own, however, the “industry will take a long time to catch up,” Shende said.

“The most important development recently is that the government has talked about putting together a big plan,” he said. “We haven’t seen what that plan looks like. But if and when it does come out, that would have potentially the greatest impact on anything India will do.”

In the meantime, India’s steelmakers — which directly employ 2.5 million workers and generate as much as 2% of the country’s gross domestic product — face increased competition. Last August, a Chinese steelmaker scheduled the first shipment of green steel to Italy, an effort to establish a supply chain between the People’s Republic and the EU ahead of the carbon tariff taking effect. In November, industry groups representing European and Chinese steel producers and buyers came together to work on a uniform set of standards for determining whether steel is, in fact, green.

“The Chinese are much better prepared with green steel than India is, and they will probably gain market share at India’s expense by being more compliant” with the EU’s new carbon tariff, Deb said. “That threat of losing market share is relevant and important for India’s decision-making process. It would be a very hard blow to the Indian steel industry.”

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Is Admin’s assault on climate and clean energy reversible?

Jan 26, 2026

This story was first published by Grist.

One year ago, with one of the first strokes of his presidential Sharpie, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a “national energy emergency,” making good on a campaign promise to “drill, baby, drill.” It was the first of many such orders, signaling that the championing of fossil fuels would be a cornerstone of the new administration: A subsequent order pledged to revitalize America’s waning coal industry, eliminate subsidies for electric vehicles approved by Congress under former President Joe Biden, and loosen regulations for domestic producers of fossil fuels. Yet another executive order withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the nearly unanimously adopted international treaty that coordinates the global fight against climate change. He resumed liquefied natural gas permitting paused by his predecessor and reopened United States coastlines to drilling.

In the days following his inauguration, Trump killed a climate jobs training program, closed off millions of acres of federal water designated for offshore wind development, and scrubbed mentions of climate change from some federal agency websites. To many observers, it looked like the most comprehensive reorientation of the executive branch’s environmental and climate priorities in American history.

On paper, it certainly appears as though Trump has continued to make good on these early promises. He pushed Congress to pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which phases out an extensive set of tax credits — for wind and solar energy, electric vehicles, and other decarbonization tools — that were responsible for much of the progress the U.S. was expected to make toward its Paris Agreement commitments. (That move has already led some companies to abandon new clean energy projects.) Trump’s attacks on the nation’s offshore wind industry, which he recently called “so pathetic and so bad,” have been unrelenting, culminating in a blanket ban on offshore leases last month. A few weeks ago, he upped the ante on his earlier withdrawal from the Paris Agreement by severing ties with the United Nations framework that facilitates international cooperation on matters of climate change, environmental health, and resilience — a treaty that was ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 1992.

“It has been an extraordinarily destructive year,” said Rachel Cleetus, climate and energy policy director at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s not hard to find specific moves that have already done tangible harm to the climate: The EPA, for instance, delayed a requirement that oil and gas operators reduce emissions of methane, an ultra-potent and fast-acting greenhouse gas, for a full year. The Interior Department announced a $625 million investment to “reinvigorate and expand America’s coal industry” and directed a costly Michigan coal plant on the verge of closure to stay open.

However, while these moves have been effective in sowing panic and uncertainty, their long-term effects on the country’s climate policy framework are far from certain. Indeed, only a small fraction of the climate damage threatened by Trump is truly permanent, experts told Grist. That’s not only because many of Trump’s moves may ultimately be ruled illegal — federal judges in Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia, for instance, allowed offshore wind farms in those states to resume construction just last week — but also because executive actions can be reversed by a future president. And the president has not shown much interest in passing energy- or climate-related legislation, a far more durable form of policymaking than executive decree. Despite claims to the contrary, Trump has signed fewer bills than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“He is not changing law,” said Elaine Kamarck, who worked in the Clinton administration and is the founding director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management. “He is changing practice.”

Even something as unprecedented as the EPA’s moves to relinquish its own authority to regulate the emissions that affect human health — a responsibility that is a core tenet part of the agency’s mission and is therefore widely regarded as unlikely to hold up in court — could be unraveled by a future administration even if it’s ruled to be legal, though that process would take years.

“You can’t make up for the lost time, the increased emissions, and the extent that new areas are opened up for [fossil fuel] exploration,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “But from a regulatory perspective, what this administration is doing to EPA and the other agencies are all executive actions that can be undone in the same way they were done.”

The major exception is the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA. If a future administration wants to restore expansive tax credits for wind and solar energy, that president will have to push Congress to pass new climate legislation. But the climate-relevant portions of OBBBA are noteworthy for being subtractive rather than additive — and are perhaps more accurately viewed as a representation of Trump’s quest to refute Biden’s legacy than as a desire to radically alter U.S. energy law. Indeed, the new law left in place the tax credits for other sources of carbon-free energy, including nuclear and geothermal — something that more moderate Republicans who do not share the president’s dismissal of climate science have been quick to note.

“We like to point out that the baseload clean energy credits were maintained,” said Luke Bolar, head of external affairs and communications at ClearPath, a think tank that develops conservative climate policies. Sean Casten, a Democratic U.S. representative from Illinois, said that the goal of the Biden-era climate legislation — ensuring that U.S. clean energy can be built in a cost-competitive way — has largely been achieved even if specific parts of the law have been repealed.

“Every single zero-carbon power source … is still cheaper on the margin than a fuel energy source,” he said.

The relative fragility of Trump’s assault on bedrock environmental and climate laws could be a product of the president’s prioritization of political dominance over lasting change, said Josh Freed, senior vice president for climate and energy at the think tank Third Way.

For example, the administration has taken steps to shield the American coal industry from the punishing blows of competition, environmental regulation, and the rising costs of mining. Trump has signed an executive order aimed at “reinvigorating America’s beautiful clean coal industry,” granted coal-fired power plants temporary exemptions from emissions limits, and ended a federal moratorium on coal leasing. But those interventions will do little in the long run to reverse a decline driven mainly by economics: The nation’s aging coal plants are becoming increasingly expensive to run while natural gas and solar energy have only gotten cheaper. And they certainly don’t help the president’s stated goal of reducing household energy costs.

To attempt to make sense of the president’s crusade to save coal is to assume there is a larger political strategy at play — which may not be the case, Freed said.

“There’s no reason to bring back coal other than to show that the administration can bring back coal,” he said. “It’s not like there’s this huge lobbying effort or donor base that will be of significant benefit to MAGA or Republicans if they do it.”

A style of governance motivated by political dominance is a good way to make headlines, but it’s not a particularly effective way to build a lasting legacy. Trump’s efforts to buoy coal may help the industry in the short term, but experts are broadly in agreement that coal can’t be “saved” without sustained support from the federal government. And an industry that can survive only with a coal-friendly Republican in the Oval Office isn’t exactly thriving.

“When you have to get the government to step in to put its thumb on the scale in order to help your industry,” Sean Feaster, an energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told my colleagues earlier this week, “it’s a sign that you’re not particularly competitive, right?”

For decades now, the pendulum of U.S. climate policy has swung left and right, reflecting the priorities of the sitting president. Trump’s climate blitzkrieg may be the starkest example yet of the benefits and drawbacks of that model. But despite his best efforts to stand out from the pack, the president’s first year back in office fits a well-worn pattern. As a result, his victories may not last much longer than his presidency.

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Why automakers are the key to cleaner steelmaking

Jan 22, 2026

Primary steel, the strongest and most durable form of the metal, is typically also the dirtiest kind. That’s because the most common way to forge it begins with producing iron in coal-fired blast furnaces.

Now, for the first time, a new report identifies who buys the lion’s share of primary steel in the United States — and how much steel they’re buying.

At least 60% of U.S. primary steel is purchased by automobile manufacturers, according to an analysis from the environmental group Mighty Earth that was shared exclusively with Canary Media. The six automakers identified in the report — Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co., Hyundai Motor Group, Stellantis, and Toyota Motor Corp. — produce 73% of all new cars on American roads.

The finding highlights a point of leverage for customers in decarbonizing American steel production at a moment when steelmakers are largely reversing plans for greener mills and doubling down on coal-fired blast furnaces.

“The auto market drives blast furnaces in the U.S.,” said Matthew Groch, senior director of decarbonization at Mighty Earth. “If they really cared and wanted to, they could put pressure on these companies they’re buying steel from. But they aren’t, and they don’t.”

Only one of the six automakers, Honda, responded to emailed questions from Canary Media. But the Japanese firm declined to comment on its steel suppliers.

“Honda is actively working to reduce CO₂ emissions associated with raw material procurement and manufacturing processes,” Honda spokesperson Chris Abbruzzese said in an email. “We do not publicly disclose individual supplier relationships.”

Automakers have traditionally relied on primary steel to form the outer shell of their cars because it’s long been considered higher quality than steel made from recycled scrap metal in electric arc furnaces. Increasingly, though, thanks to improvements in its purity and strength, so-called secondary steel has been able to displace some of that demand. Steel recyclers like Nucor say the auto sector represents a growing share of their customer base, but primary steel made using coal still dominates the sector.

To identify the buyers of primary U.S. steel, Mighty Earth commissioned the consultancy Empower LLC to conduct “an exhaustive review” of supply chains, according to the report. The analysts then reviewed “everything from annual reports and investor presentations to new articles and company websites, looking for clues regarding links between the steel facilities of interest and their ties to the largest U.S. automakers.” The study relied on supply chain and financial data from the platforms Panjiva, Sayari Graph, S&P Capital IQ, and MarkLines, and it used OpenRailwayMap to track materials shipped by train.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office a year ago, the nascent efforts to clean up America’s primary steel production have largely collapsed.

Cleveland-Cliffs, which had been awarded a $500 million grant from the Biden administration to finance construction of new, greener equipment at one of its Ohio steelworks, abandoned the initiative and is now working with Trump’s Energy Department to develop a coal-focused scope for the project.

U.S. Steel, whose sale to Japanese rival Nippon Steel was approved by the Trump administration, finds itself at a crossroads. The company has promised some greener investments in the U.S. but has yet to announce any specifics. Its new owner, however, has a reputation as “a coal company that also makes steel” — and Nippon has also promised to invest in upgrading U.S. Steel’s blast furnaces to last longer.

That leaves Hyundai’s project to build a low-carbon steel factory in Louisiana as the flagship push for clean steel in the U.S.

Despite recent challenges from the Trump administration, Hyundai has signaled its commitment to bringing the facility online by 2029. The plant is designed to first use blue hydrogen, the version of the fuel made with fossil gas and carbon capture equipment, to produce the cleaner direct reduced iron. But by the mid-2030s, the facility is expected to switch to green hydrogen, made with electrolyzers powered by renewables.

The low-carbon iron will then be fed into electric arc furnaces to produce steel — making it the first integrated low-carbon steel plant in the U.S. That Louisiana plant could reduce emissions by at least 75% relative to a traditional integrated steel plant with a blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace.

In a sign of progress, Hyundai this month announced plans to test its DRI equipment at an existing steelworks in South Korea in anticipation of bringing the technology to Louisiana.

Once that Louisiana plant comes online, Groch said, it’s expected to generate enough steel to meet Hyundai’s needs and supply additional potential buyers — opening up an opportunity for other automakers. In its report, Mighty Earth calls on automakers to commit to buying more green steel in the coming years.

General Motors and Ford have committed to buying at least 10% green steel by 2030 as part of a pledge via the First Movers Coalition, led by the World Economic Forum. Other global carmakers not included in Mighty Earth’s report, such as Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, have adopted separate targets. Honda, Stellantis, and Toyota, meanwhile, have avoided making such promises.

Holding car companies to those targets has proved challenging. While some companies have vowed to slash emissions by buying more low-carbon steel, a September 2024 report by the International Council on Clean Transportation found that carmakers’ pledges to buy fossil-free steel by 2030 cover less than 2% of their total demand for the metal.

“We’re not asking for everyone to have 100% green steel,” Groch said. “But these are their commitments, and the car companies are the ones driving investment in steel.”

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