COP30 Ends With a Fossil Fuel Win

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THE TOP FIVE

1. COP30 ends with a fossil fuel victory

The conference logo on a building. Wagner Meier/Getty Images

The final resolution that concluded the United Nations climate summit in Brazil made no mention of fossil fuels, in what The New York Times called “a victory for oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia.” But the so-called COP30 confab in the northeastern Amazonian city of Belém made some notable progress. This was the first conference to seriously broach the effects of mining the metals needed for the energy transition, as I wrote here last week. The event had other firsts, as the Financial Times noted: It was the first completely spurned by the U.S. administration, “the first since the world hit 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming for an entire calendar year,” and — it turned out — “the first with a venue plagued by extreme heat, flooding — even a fire that brought the talks to a standstill for much of their second-last day.” But, FT columnist Pilita Clark continued, Brazil’s turn at the yearly summit “still managed something these huge annual gatherings should have done years ago: a shift away from showy pledges to tackling the real world complexities of cutting carbon emissions.”

The COP30 statement “does not spell out the implications or required response as bluntly as many want to see,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo wrote, “It does, however, introduce an important new concept that could become a key part of the negotiations in the future. For the first time, the text references a resolve to ‘limit both the magnitude and duration of any temperature overshoot.’ This not only acknowledges that it’s possible to bring temperatures back down after warming surpasses 1.5 degrees, but that the level at which temperatures peak, and the length of time we remain at that peak before the world begins to cool, are just as important. The statement implies the need for a much larger conversation about carbon removal that has been nearly absent from the annual COPs, but which scientists say that countries must have if they are serious about the Paris Agreement goals.”

2. U.S. Export-Import Bank will invest $100 billion in ‘energy dominance’

The U.S. Export-Import Bank plans to invest $100 billion in overseas energy projects to promote President Donald Trump’s global energy dominance. The first tranche of funding will go to projects in Egypt, Pakistan, and Europe. In his first interview since taking office in September, the federal lender’s newly-appointed chair, John Jovanovic, told the FT the administration was focusing the bank on “efforts to secure U.S. and allied supply chains for critical minerals, nuclear energy, and liquified natural gas to counter western reliance on China and Russia.” In short, Jovanovic said, the Ex-Im Bank is “back in a big way, and it’s open for business.”

3. Wyoming is planning America’s first new coal plant in 12 years

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon last week announced $4 million in state matching funds to study building a second coal-fired unit at the Dry Fork Station power plant in Gillette. The move, Cowboy State Daily reported, “could be the first step toward building a new coal-fired power plant” in the sparsely populated state’s third-largest city. “This is clear proof that coal is not dead and a reminder that Wyoming’s strength has always come from our ability to innovate without abandoning our values,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement. If built, the plant would be the first new coal-fired unit to open in the U.S. since 2013.

The Trump administration is trying to keep existing coal plants open. But it’s running into the problem that their equipment keeps breaking down, as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote. The trend toward coal isn’t unique to Trump’s America. Coal demand is rising globally.

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4. Oregon’s governor orders sweeping review of clean energy bottlenecks

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek ordered state agencies last week to speed up the government’s performance on permitting, energy efficiency, electrification, and low-carbon fuel. In a speech, the Democrat said her administration would pursue the cheapest pathway to the state’s 2040 target of decarbonizing electricity, E&E News reported. “We’re talking about what we really need to meet our [climate] goals in an affordable way… where we’re not getting help from the federal government,” Kotek said Wednesday at a press conference.

Democratic states are largely in a moment of flux on climate policy. California eased permitting restrictions and passed a series of bills on energy and emissions, as Emily laid out at the time. As I reported here last week, Pennsylvania took the opposite approach and withdrew from the multi-state cap-and-trade market under pressure to contain costs. New York, meanwhile, has required a federal judge to intervene to force its government to enforce climate regulations. It's all part of the emerging tension between Democrats' affordability campaigns and the party's desire to cut planet-heating pollution, as Heatmap's Robinson Meyer wrote.

5. British oil and gas developer Harbour Energy is pumped on the U.S.

Regular readers of this newsletter scarcely need reminding of two basic realities about the American oil and gas industry right now: Trump is opening virtually everywhere he can to production, but drilling has largely remained flat. But the market is looking good to the British developer Harbour Energy. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Linda Cook, the company’s chief executive, said Harbour Energy is exploring a potential acquisition or merger with rivals in the U.S. offshore and onshore drilling business as a way to enter “the biggest market in the world” where the London-headquartered firm isn’t already present. In a sign of confidence in Trump’s as-yet-unrealized promise to “drill, baby, drill,” Harbour Energy has widened its scope from its past inquiries into only U.S. offshore assets to also look at onshore drilling.

THE KICKER

Beyond COP30, Brazil has at least one more first. The country’s National Nuclear Energy Commission approved construction of Latin America’s first nuclear waste repository, set to start next year, World Nuclear News reported. While Brazil is one of the only nations in the region with atomic energy, the country has just two reactors. Despite approaching nuclear power more hesitantly than neighboring Argentina, breaking ground on the first storage site would signal a significant step forward for the nascent industry in South America.