China Loosens Its Climate Goals

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms across the Great Plains are raising the risk late into Friday night of nocturnal tornadoes, which are nearly three times as deadly as daytime twisters • The Red and Mississippi rivers are poised swell as clouds dump up to 4 inches of rain on the region • Strong katabatic winds up to 65 miles per hour are blasting Antarctica with blizzard conditions.

THE TOP FIVE

1. China loosens its climate goals

A coal terminal yard at Lianyungang Port in Jiangsu province.Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Back in November, I told you that China’s emissions had stayed steady in the third quarter of last year, extending a flat or falling trend that began in March 2024. Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that the country’s solar boom had balanced out an increase in planet-heating pollution from other sectors of the world’s second-largest economy. So Beijing’s announcement yesterday that it would slightly water down its climate goals for the rest of the decade came with only muted criticism. In its latest five-year plan published Thursday, the People’s Republic pledged to cut carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 17% between 2026 and 2030, down from the 18% set out in the document that covered the 2021 to 2025 period. Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst for the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told Climate Home News the target was “underwhelming.” Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told the publication that China’s decarbonization efforts were stymied by the pandemic and slowing economic growth, noting that the new target “indicates a quiet recalibration, effectively acknowledging how difficult the goal has become.”

In the United States, meanwhile, scientists published a first-of-a-kind assessment of the health of American nature and wildlife on their own after the Trump administration pulled its support from the project commissioned by the Biden administration. The 868-page draft went live this week, seeking public comment and scientific review. The findings paint what The New York Times called a “grim” picture: “Freshwater ecosystems across the country are in crisis, ‘overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and invaded.’ Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are degraded, with reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34% of plant species and 40% of animal species are at risk of extinction.”

2. Trump’s first oil and gas lease sale in Alaska yields no takers

On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior ended the Trump administration’s first Alaskan oil and gas lease sale without a single bidder for more than a million acres of federal waters in the Cook Inlet. In a statement, the Sierra Club called the auction, which it opposed, “a big fat failure” and a repeat of the last offshore lease sale in Alaska in 2022, which brought in just one bid. At the time, the Biden administration tried to cancel the lease, citing a lack of interest from industry. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan accused Biden of “blatantly lying to the American people” and presenting a “fantasy” about industry demand as part of a broader attempt to “shun U.S. energy production.” In statements to the television outlet KTUU in Anchorage, both Republicans called this week’s results “disappointing.”

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3. FEMA cancels all emergency managers trainings

Heatmap’s Jeva Lange had a big scoop yesterday: The embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency suspended all of its training and education programs for emergency managers across the country — except for those “directly supporting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.” Jeva got her hands on an internal communication from the agency’s leadership directing the National Training and Education Division to “cease course delivery operations” for the nearly 300 trainings it provides to local first responders and emergency managers. “In states like California, where all public employees are sworn in as disaster service workers, jurisdictions have been left without the resources to train their employees,” she wrote.

Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the first cabinet chief fired since Trump returned to office, “all but killed” FEMA by shredding its budgets, as Grist put it. Long delays for FEMA assistance in disaster-struck states such as North Carolina spurred Republican fury at Noem, The New York Times reported. Whether her successor, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, represents a significant change from Noem’s worldview remains to be seen.

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4. Google and Amazon pledge to cut climate ‘superpollutants’

Amazon, Google, JPMorgan Chase and other corporate giants signed onto a $100 million effort to fund projects that cut climate superpollutants such as methane, black carbon, and refrigerant gases. The campaign, called the Superpollutant Action Initiative, is set to supply financing through 2030. For a taste of what it might mean, Axios reported that “Randy Spock, Google's carbon credits and removals lead, cited potential project areas like cutting landfill methane and stemming the release of refrigerant gases when HVAC systems are replaced.”

The announcement came a day after both Amazon and Google joined the White House’s “ratepayer protection pledge,” which Politico called the “build your own power plant pledge.” Aside from the obvious fact that it’s voluntary, the pact has limits. Namely, a lot of decisions about power plants are dictated by local regulations and regional electricity markets.

5. BYD unveils the second generation of its ultra-fast charging Blade battery

BYD just revealed a new battery that InsideEVs said “makes Western EV tech look ancient.” The second generation of its Blade battery can charge from 10% to 70% in just five minutes and 10% to 97% in 10 minutes. The release comes as sales at the world’s largest electric automaker decline amid mounting competition in the Chinese market.

THE KICKER

The global asset manager Galvanize has raised $370 million for a new subsidiary focused on helping “undercapitalized” commercial buildings slash energy bills. The Galvanize Real Estate Fund will target buildings “in supply-constrained, high growth U.S. markets that represent attractive opportunities to drive net operating income growth.” The company will then come into the buildings with “decarbonization and resilience interventions — which include a combination of on-site renewable energy generation, energy efficiency retrofits, and electrification — aim to protect against rising costs and reduce building emissions.”