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BELÉM, Brazil — The Trump administration slammed the door on clean energy. China is sending the message it’s open for business. The signs are not hard to find in the sweltering, dimly lit convention center in the Amazon where delegates from nearly 200 countries are debating the Earth’s future. China’s section of the United Nations climate summit’s main hall features 5-foot-tall poster boards boasting of the country’s battery and electrical projects, from Egypt to Indonesia to Brazil. Corporate “partners” listed on the back wall include CATL, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric car batteries. BYD, the crown jewel of China’s world-leading electric vehicle empire, is an official sponsor of the summit, as is fellow Chinese electric carmaker GWM. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal brand is on display at the U.N. gathering, known as COP30, which is scheduled to end Friday. Visitors to the Chinese pavilion can find shrink-wrapped copies of books collecting his writings and speeches. Meanwhile, the United States is absent from the summit for the first time ever, as President Donald Trump disavows any participation in addressing a climate crisis that he calls a “hoax.” That’s not just a setback for the planet, climate supporters say. They say it also symbolizes a self-inflicted economic threat, as the U.S. abandons the growing worldwide market for EVs, solar panels, wind turbines and other clean technologies — and cedes it to China. “It’s not about electric power. This is about economic power,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of the few prominent American politicians at the summit, during a press conference here last week. He said Trump “simply doesn’t understand how enthusiastic President Xi is today that the Trump administration is nowhere to be found at COP30.” China does not yet show any signs that it’s trying to fill the role the U.S. has sometimes played at the annual climate talks: joining with the EU in pushing for all countries to make more ambitious climate commitments. While it has publicly lamented the U.S. exit from the U.N. dialogue, China still describes itself as a developing country and has proposed only modestly ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals for its own economy. The Chinese are an undeniably major presence in Belém, however — Beijing’s 789 delegates make up the second-largest national contingent at the summit, behind the 3,805 people representing the host country, Brazil, and just ahead of Nigeria, according to an independent analysis of U.N. records. The official U.S. delegation has consisted solely of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who said the State Department set up impediments to his two-day visit that ended Saturday. Trump’s hostility to clean energy is a turnaround from former President Joe Biden’s administration, which pursued big-spending green policies — backed by protectionist tax rules that irked allies in Europe — in an attempt to compete with Chinese dominance. Some developing countries had welcomed Biden’s assertiveness, saying it offered an alternative to the onerous conditions that often come from accepting Chinese infrastructure and energy assistance. But that option is rapidly fading after Trump signed a Republican-backed law stripping away Biden’s green energy subsidies. “Most of the equipment, we are buying from China,” said an official from an East African government who was granted anonymity to avoid retribution from the Trump administration. “The market has been broken. Under Biden, people were motivated to buy things from the U.S.” Others attending the summit said they believe Trump’s policies will eventually leave the U.S. itself dependent on China as the global energy market shifts to cleaner products. That trend could hollow out the U.S. industrial core, said Nigel Topping, chair of the Climate Change Committee that advises the U.K. government. “It won’t be long before we have a queue of American governors begging BYD to set up electric car factories in the States,” Topping said. FOSSIL FUELS NOT DEAD YET Trump is articulating a starkly different vision: supplying the world’s growing energy demands with U.S. fossil fuels. He has backed up his talk with action, including using trade threats to undermine international climate agreements and pressure countries to buy more American oil and natural gas. The approach seizes on the fact that the U.S. is the world’s top oil and gas producer, a role it was already using for geopolitical advantage during the Biden era. Trump and his aides maintain that switching to green energy sources would only strengthen China’s stranglehold on wind, solar, battery, electric vehicle and rare earth supply chains. “President Trump wasted no time reversing Joe Biden’s Green New Scam, which significantly contributed to the worst inflation crisis in modern American history, drove up energy prices across the country, and stifled economic growth,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “By unleashing American energy, we are strengthening our grid stability, making energy affordable for families and businesses, and protecting our national security.” The White House’s stance contains an inherent bet — that the world is not on the verge of a dramatic pivot to clean energy. “You will hear people go, ‘Well, the U.S. is peddling fossil fuels, and the Chinese are pushing renewables,’” said George David Banks, an international climate aide during Trump’s first term. “Well, yeah, that’s because that’s what we have, and that’s what they have.” Trump’s vision of a future flush with fossil fuels got some validation last week from the Paris-based International Energy Agency, whose recent track record of projecting massive increases in green energy has made it a target of conservatives in Washington. The IEA’s newest forecast includes a much different scenario based on nations’ existing laws that predicts worldwide oil and gas consumption will keep growing through 2050. But the IEA report also includes an alternative scenario — accounting for policies that countries plan to adopt — which envisions a future of rising renewable energy deployment, with fossil fuel use peaking before 2030. The energy think tank Ember said Thursday that wind and solar power expanded quickly enough during the first three quarters of 2025 to meet all the world’s new power demands, and it projected that fossil fuel power generation will not increase this year for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic. A pledge that countries made at the 2023 U.N. climate summit to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 appears within reach, Ember said. Wagering the United States’ economic future on the continued dominance of fossil fuels is foolish, former Vice President Al Gore said in an interview in Belém. “It’s a tragedy that Donald Trump has shot the U.S. economy in both feet and hobbled our ability to compete more effectively with China,” Gore said, pointing to Ember’s data showing that green technology exports from China exceed the value of all fossil fuel exports from the U.S. “One sector is an appreciating asset, the other is a diminishing asset, and the U.S. is on the wrong side of that equation.” During the two days of world leaders’ speeches preceding this month’s summit, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang took a veiled shot at Trump’s trade and clean energy policies. “China is ready to work with all parties to unswervingly promote green and low-carbon development,” he said. ‘LARGE INVESTMENTS FIRST’ The United States still has a big footprint at COP30, of course — even if the federal government doesn’t. U.S. companies such as GE Vernova, Baker Hughes, Citibank and Bank of America attended the summit, noted Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. He said those businesses will pursue clean energy projects regardless of who occupies the White House or whether the president sends anyone to the talks. “Are we winning in that race?” Durbin said before a slight pause. “We’re in the race. And we’re going to continue to be part of that.” But others said they believe Trump’s policies will leave the U.S. in the lurch. While some foreign clean energy companies have exited the U.S. as an immediate response to Trump’s policy reversals, they will avoid the country altogether in the medium and long terms “if you cannot trust in it,” said Anne Simonsen, climate policy head of the business group Danish Industry. At the same time, China is going all in. China has poured huge direct investments into building clean technology and electric vehicle factories in emerging economies. In Brazil, Chinese investment in the electricity sector last year spiked 115 percent to $1.43 billion, with 69 percent of total Chinese-backed projects consisting of green energy and sustainability, according to the Brazil-China Business Council. Rich and poor nations have benefited from Chinese oversupply to buy cut-rate gear to meet clean energy goals. That approach and Chinese investments have transformed economies, said André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, president of the COP30 summit. China “added the elements that I believe were missing” from the world’s green energy transition, Corrêa do Lago said Nov. 10 at a press conference. “One of them is scale. The other is technology. And the other is the fact that as a developing country, it needs to bring solutions that are affordable to more people.” But he acknowledged in a separate interview with POLITICO that while China’s gusher of less-expensive technology could help address climate change more quickly, relying on one supplier creates other complications. China is “indisputably” the leader in all green technology, much of which is high quality, said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s climate envoy and chief negotiator. He said U.S. automakers are “shit-scared” that they won’t be able to catch up with Chinese models, a worry that Newsom also espoused in several public comments. As an economist by trade, Monterrey Gómez said he too worries about the world relying so much on one supplier. Still, he said he sees no major alternative at the moment. “They did fast investments, large investments first,” he said. “That’s why they’re benefiting from this.” Sara Schonhardt contributed to this report from Belém, Brazil.

BELÉM, Brazil — United Nations climate summits have for years ended with bold promises to stave off global warming. But those commitments often fade when nations go home. Three years ago, in a resort city on the Red Sea, delegates from nearly 200 countries approved what they hailed as a historic fund to help poorer nations pay for climate damages — but it’s at risk of running dry. A year later, negotiations a few miles from Dubai’s gleaming waterfront achieved the first-ever worldwide pledge to turn away from fossil fuels — but production of oil and natural gas is still rising, a trend championed by the new administration in Washington. That legacy is casting a shadow over this year’s conference near the mouth of the Amazon River, which the host, Brazil, has dubbed a summit of truth. Days after the gathering started last week, nations were still sorting out what to do with contentious issues that have typically held up the annual negotiations. As the talks opened, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the world must “fight” efforts to deny the reality of climate change — decades after scientists concluded that people are making the Earth hotter. That led one official to offer a grim assessment of global efforts to tackle climate change, 10 years after an earlier summit produced the sweeping Paris Agreement. “We have miserably failed to accomplish the objective of this convention, which is the stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s climate envoy and lead negotiator, during an interview at the conference site in Belém, Brazil. “Additional promises mean nothing if you didn’t achieve or fulfill your previous promises,” he added. It hasn’t helped that the U.S. is skipping the summit for the first time, or that President Donald Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax and urged the world to abandon efforts to fix it. But Trump isn’t the only reason for stalled action. Economic uncertainty, infighting and political backsliding have stymied green measures in both North America and Europe. In other parts of the world, countries are embracing the economic opportunities that the green transition offers. Many officials in Belém point to signs that progress is underway, including the rapid growth of renewables and electric vehicles and a broader understanding of both the world’s challenges and the means to address them. “Now we talk about solar panels, electric cars, regenerative agriculture, stopping deforestation, as if we have always talked about those things,” said Ana Toni, the summit’s executive director. “Just in one decade, the topic changed totally. But we still need to speed up the process.” Still, analysts say it’s become inevitable that the world’s warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius since the dawn of the industrial era, breaching the target at the heart of the Paris Agreement. With that in mind, countries are huddling at this month’s summit, known as COP30, with the hope of finding greater alignment on how to slow rising temperatures. But how credible would any promises reached in Brazil be? Here are five pledges achieved at past climate summits — and where they stand now: MOVING AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS The historic 2023 agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels, made at the COP28 talks in Dubai, was the first time that nearly 200 countries agreed to wind down their use of oil, natural gas and coal. Though nonbinding, that commitment was even more striking because the talks were overseen by the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company. Just two years later, fossil fuel consumption is on the rise, despite rapid growth of wind and solar, and many of the world’s largest oil and gas producers plan to drill even more. The United States — the world’s biggest economy, top oil and gas producer and second-largest climate polluter — is pursuing a fossil fuel renaissance while forsaking plans to shift toward renewables. The president of the Dubai summit, Sultan al-Jaber, said at a recent energy conference that while wind and solar would expand, so too would oil and gas, in part to meet soaring demand for data centers. Liquefied natural gas would grow 65 percent by 2050, and oil will continue to be used as a feedstock for plastic, he said. “The exponential growth of AI is also creating a power surge that no one anticipated 18 months ago,” he said in a press release from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., where he remains managing director and group CEO. The developed world is continuing to move in the wrong direction on fossil fuels, climate activists say. “We know that the world’s richest countries are continuing to invest in oil and gas development,” said Bill Hare, a climate scientist who founded Climate Analytics, a policy group. “This simply should not be happening.” The Paris-based International Energy Agency said last week that oil and gas demand could grow for decades to come. That statement marked a reversal from the group’s previous forecast that oil use would peak in 2030 as clean energy takes hold. Trump’s policies are one reason for the pivot. Still, renewables such as wind and solar power are soaring in many countries, leading analysts to believe that nations will continue to shift away from fossil fuels. How quickly that will happen is unknown. “The transition is underway but not yet at the pace or scale required,” said a U.N. report on global climate action released last week. It pointed to large gaps in efforts to reduce fossil fuel subsidies and abate methane pollution. Lula opened this year’s climate conference by calling for a “road map” to cut fossil fuels globally. It has earned support from countries such as Colombia, Germany, Kenya and the United Kingdom. But it’s not part of the official agenda at these talks, and many poorer countries say what they really need is funding and support to make the shift. TRIPLE RENEWABLE ENERGY, DOUBLE ENERGY EFFICIENCY This call also emerged from the 2023 summit, and was considered a tangible measure of countries’ progress toward achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets. Countries are on track to meet the pledge to triple their renewable energy capacity by 2030, thanks largely to a record surge in solar power, according to energy think tank Ember. It estimates that the world is set to add around 793 gigawatts of new renewable capacity in 2025, up from 717 gigawatts in 2024, driven mainly by China. “If this pace continues, annual additions now only need to grow by around 12 percent a year from 2026 to 2030 to reach tripling, compared with 21 percent originally needed,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s chief analyst. “But governments will need to strengthen commitments to lock this in.” The pledge to double the world’s energy efficiency by 2030, by contrast, is a long way behind. While efficiency improvements would need to grow by 4 percent a year to reach that target, they hit only 1 percent in 2024. ‘LOSS AND DAMAGE’ FUND When the landmark fund for victims of climate disasters was established at the 2022 talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, it offered promise that billions of dollars would someday flow to nations slammed by hurricanes, droughts or rising seas. Three years later, it has less than $800 million — only a little more than it had in 2023. Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, excoriated leaders this month for not providing more. Her rebuke came little more than a week after Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever seen in the Atlantic, swept across the Caribbean. “All of us should hold our heads down in shame, because having established this fund a few years ago in Sharm El-Sheikh, its capital base is still under $800 million while Jamaica reels from damage in excess of $7 billion, not to mention Cuba or the Bahamas,” she said. Last week, the fund announced it was allocating $250 million for financial requests to help less-wealthy nations grapple with “damage from slow onset and extreme climate-induced events.” The fund’s executive director, Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, said the call for contributions was significant but also a reminder that the fund needs much more money. Richard Muyungi, chair for the African Group of Negotiators and Tanzania’s climate envoy, said he expects additional funds will come from this summit, though not the billions needed. “There is a chance that the fund will run out of money by next year, year after next, before it even is given a chance to replenish itself,” said Michai Robertson, a senior finance adviser for the Alliance of Small Island States. GLOBAL METHANE PLEDGE Backed by the U.S. and European Union, this pledge to cut global methane emissions 30 percent by 2030 was launched four years ago at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, sparking a wave of talk about the benefits of cutting methane, a greenhouse gas with a relatively short shelf life but much greater warming potential than carbon dioxide. “The Global Methane Pledge has been instrumental in catalyzing attention to the issue of methane, because it has moved from a niche issue to one of the critical elements of the climate planning discussions,” said Giulia Ferrini, head of the U.N. Environment Program’s International Methane Emissions Observatory. “All the tools are there,” she added. “It’s just a question of political will.” Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector remain stubbornly high, despite the economic benefits of bringing them down, according to the IEA. The group’s latest methane tracker shows that energy-based methane pollution was around 120 million tons in 2024, roughly the same as a year earlier. Despite more than 150 nations joining the Global Methane Pledge, few countries or companies have devised plans to meet their commitments, “and even fewer have demonstrated verifiable emissions reductions,” the IEA said. The European Union’s methane regulation requires all oil and gas operators to measure, report and verify their emissions, including importers. And countries and companies are becoming more diligent about complying with an international satellite program that notifies companies and countries of methane leaks so they can repair them. Responses went from just 1 percent of alerts last year to 12 percent so far in 2025. More work is needed to achieve the 2030 goal, the U.N. says. Meanwhile, U.S. officials have pressured the EU to rethink its methane curbs. Barbados and several other countries are calling for a binding methane pact similar to the Montreal Protocol, the 1987 agreement that’s widely credited with saving the ozone layer by phasing out the use of harmful pollutants. That’s something Paris Agreement architect Laurence Tubiana hopes could happen. “I’m just in favor of tackling this very seriously, because the pledge doesn’t work [well] enough,” she said. CLIMATE FINANCE In 2009, wealthy countries agreed to provide $100 billion annually until 2025 to help poorer nations deal with rising temperatures. At last year’s climate talks in Azerbaijan, they upped the ante to $300 billion per year by 2035. But those countries delivered the $100 billion two years late, and many nations viewed the new $300 billion commitment with disappointment. India, which expressed particular ire about last year’s outcome, is pushing for new discussions in Brazil to get that money flowing. “Finance really is at the core of everything that we do,” Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate envoy, told POLITICO’s E&E News. But he also recognizes that governments alone are not the answer. “We cannot say finance must only come from the public sector.” Last year’s pledge included a call for companies and multilateral development banks to contribute a sum exceeding $1 trillion by 2035, but much of that would be juiced by donor nations — and more countries would need to contribute. That is more important now, said Jake Werksman, the EU’s lead negotiator. “As you know, one of the larger contributors to this process, the U.S., has essentially shut down all development flows from the U.S. budget, and no other party, including the EU, can make up for that gap,” he said during a press conference. Zack Colman and Zia Weise contributed to this report from Belém, Brazil.

STRASBOURG — Europe should protect its share of market from global competitors’ investment in green tech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday. Von der Leyen said European Union leaders will discuss the issue during their Thursday summit. “The clean transition is in full swing,” she said during a debate in the European Parliament, pointing out how every year, hundreds of gigawatts of energy are added globally. “Cleantech markets around the world are booming,” including batteries, wind turbines and electric cars. “The rise in cleantech in Europe is also good news for energy security, and it is a great economic opportunity,” she added. Yet, she warned, Europe in the past missed out on chances to lead on green industry, with the loss of solar panel industry to more competitive Chinese companies being “a cautionary tale that we must not forget.” “Europe was a global leader in solar, but heavily subsidized Chinese competitors started to outprice Europe’s young industry — and today, China controls 90 percent of the global market.” “This time, we should learn our lesson,” she added, name-checking the Middle East and the “Global South” as regions competing for their spot in the global industrial green tech race. The European Commission expects renewables and other forms of clean energy to supply 50 percent of energy globally, while the cleantech market is projected to grow from €600 billion to €2 trillion over the next 10 years. The EU wants to capture 15 percent of the global production of clean technologies, with the EU market growing to €375 billion by 2035, according to Commission projections.

BERLIN — Germany’s coalition government agreed on measures to revamp the country’s ailing economy after hours-long negotiations that lasted into early Thursday. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative alliance and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) have been under pressure to come up with a plan to deliver on the sweeping reforms and a rapid turnaround in the country’s economic mood that they promised since taking office in May. Following two straight years of economic contraction, the government expects growth of 0.2 percent in the current year and an acceleration to 1.3 percent next year. “The economy is under pressure, and everything we decided yesterday reflects this pressure,” Bärbel Bas, the SPD’s labor minister, told reporters in Berlin Thursday morning. “We now need solutions as a matter of urgency, and for our part, I would like to say that we have agreed that we stand by the employees and want to secure jobs in this country.” The total number of unemployed people reached 3.02 million in August — the highest figure in a decade. Manufacturing companies that once drove the postwar economic boom are shedding jobs. These include national champions such as engineering group Robert Bosch —which announced last month that it would cut a further 13,000 jobs by 2030 — automaker Volkswagen, and Germany’s second-largest bank, Commerzbank. Measures designed to stabilize the economy and secure jobs include financial incentives for retirees to continue working and stricter rules for beneficiaries of the long-term unemployment benefit system. Merz spoke of a “really great working atmosphere” between the negotiators and promised a quick implementation of the measures. The incentives for pensioners would be adopted in Cabinet next week, he said, while the the legislative process on the reform of the long-term unemployment system is “to be opened immediately.” The latter topic is especially sensitive for Merz’s coalition partner, the SPD, who are known to be staunch supporters of Germany’s strong welfare state and workers’ right. Under the agreement, long-term unemployment benefits will be reduced by 30 percent if a beneficiary misses two consecutive appointments at the employment office, ultimately losing all benefits if the person fails to show up for the third appointment. “If 100,000 more people are encouraged to leave the long-term unemployment system by incentives that make work more worthwhile than unemployment, the rule of thumb is that we will save around €1 billion. That is our goal,” said Bas, who is also the co-chair of the SPD. “Our common goal is to get people into work. Then we will make real savings,” she added.

The Chinese government on Thursday announced broad new export controls on rare-earth magnets and their raw materials on grounds of national security. The move comes before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to meet U.S. President Donald Trump later this month. Washington currently charges tariffs of 57.6 percent on Chinese goods. Importers will need a government license to access certain rare-earth magnets but also refined metals and alloys that go into magnets. Beijing exploited its dominance in raw materials — and specifically rare-earth elements like scandium, yttrium and dysprosium — against the U.S. earlier this year when the Trump administration declared prohibitive tariffs on Chinese goods. The country controls the vast majority of rare-earth elements mining, refining and casting plus 90 percent of magnet production. Permanent magnets — as opposed to electromagnets — are used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, but also in U.S. military kit such as F-35 fighter jets and naval vessels. China presented the new rules as necessary under itws nonproliferation commitments and “its consistent position of firmly upholding world peace and regional stability,” according to a government spokesperson on Thursday morning. “In principle, export applications to overseas military users,” the text stipulates, “will not be approved.” It adds further limits on “end-users listed on the export control list and watch list” and subsidiaries. In Europe, a new commercial-scale factory for magnets has just opened in Estonia to reduce the bloc’s dependency on China.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Zwei Jahre nach dem Terrorangriff der Hamas wird in vielen Ländern der Opfer gedacht und um Haltung gerungen. Friedrich Merz ruft in einer Videobotschaft zu Solidarität mit Jüdinnen und Juden auf, Julia Klöckner eröffnet im Bundestag eine Ausstellung mit israelischen Kunstwerken und einem erschütternden Symbol: einem Becher vom Nova-Festival, wo das Massaker begann. Rixa Fürsen und Rasmus Buchsteiner sprechen über das heutige Gedenken, aber auch über parlamentarische Herausforderungen in der Debatte um Israel, die Hamas und das Vorgehen in Gaza.  Im zweiten Teil des Updates wird es europapolitisch: Wirtschaftsministerin Katherina Reiche stellt sich gemeinsam mit Italiens Amtskollegen Adolfo Urso gegen das EU-Verbrennerverbot. Ein Alleingang, der die SPD unangenehm erwischt. Ein Probe-Abo vom PRO-Newsletter “Industrie & Handel” gibt es hier.  Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Der Kanzler im Angriffsmodus: Friedrich Merz will der Gesetzgebungsmaschine der EU das Stöckchen in die Räder halten und legt sich damit offen mit Ursula von der Leyen an. Auf dem EU-Gipfel diese Woche in Kopenhagen geht es für ihn um weniger Bürokratie, mehr Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und auch die Rücknahme des Verbrenner-Verbots. Den Newsletter ‘Brussels Decoded’ findet ihr hier. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview hält Michael Kellner (Grüne) dagegen: Ein Rückfall zum Verbrenner würde Deutschlands Autoindustrie nur noch abhängiger von China machen. Und: Drohnen über Dänemark. Die NATO diskutiert Artikel-4-Fälle, Deutschland schickt eine Fregatte und damit zusätzliche Soldaten. Rixa Fürsen ordnet ein, was die Drohnen-Zwischenfälle für Sicherheit und Abschreckung bedeutet. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

LONDON — Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is being advised by a think tank which denies the science of climate change and claims the U.K. government wants to use electric vehicles to control its citizens. Lois Perry, U.K. and Europe director of the Heartland Institute think tank, told attendees at Reform’s annual conference last week that she was “very grateful to be able to consult and influence the Reform Party at the highest level.” The Heartland Institute confirmed to POLITICO this week that it has “held conversations with policymakers within Reform UK.”   The Institute — which is closely aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-climate policies — has cast doubt on global warming and branded climate change policies a “hoax” and a “scam.”  Earlier this year it backed Trump’s decision to pull out of the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement and to roll back Joe Biden-era clean energy projects.  The organization was invited to an event in the White House Rose Garden when Trump announced plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement during his first term in office in 2017.  “The reality is this, we’re not facing a climate crisis,” the organization’s President James Taylor told a Heartland-sponsored fringe event at Reform’s party conference in Birmingham Saturday.  Lois Perry told Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf on a Heartland online show that she had talked the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice into ditching net zero policies. | Carl Court/Getty Images He added: “We cannot have a climate crisis predicated on the notion of global warming when temperatures remain unusually cold.”  The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is unequivocal that human-induced climate change is “already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe.”  The organization launched its U.K. and EU arm in December, at a London event attended by Farage as well as former Prime Minister Liz Truss.  A spokesperson for Reform UK did not deny that the party had been in discussions with Heartland. “Reform UK meets with organisations from across the political spectrum with the view of developing a wide-ranging policy platform,” they said.  ‘HAVE A LOOK AROUND YOU’  Speaking at the same conference fringe event, Perry — a former leader of UKIP — said: “There’s nothing wrong with CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant.”   She said that government net zero policies are “bad for the environment” and had been introduced “to control us. It’s to tax us. It’s to take our money and it’s to take our liberty.”  Perry added: “They want us in electric cars. Electric cars can be remotely controlled. Again, not a conspiracy theory. These cars can be shut down.   “Imagine during Covid. Imagine your car is disabled remotely. You have no control over it, because it’s an electric car. And that’s if you can afford an electric car. There’s a reason why this neo-Marxist, communist, shambolic government wants us in electric cars. It is so that we have no freedom whatsoever.”  One person linked to the Reform-friendly Centre for a Better Britain think tank said it had not yet met Heartland but would be happy to do so.  Earlier this month, Perry told Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf on a Heartland online show that she had talked the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice into ditching net zero policies. “In that case, hats off and credit to you too,” Yusuf replied.  Reform has pledged to scrap the U.K.’s net zero target, promising this will bring down sky-high household energy bills. Reform UK seeks to professionalize and present itself as a party ready for government. | Leon Neal/Getty Images This February, Farage also told an event it was “absolutely nuts” to claim CO2 was a pollutant. In 2024 he said he didn’t want to get into “any debate on the science.” Tice has expressed views at odds with climate science. He owns a Tesla electric car, which he describes as an “amazing piece of kit.”  It comes as Reform UK — consistently topping the national polls — seeks to professionalize and present itself as a party ready for government. “I promised you a year ago, I would professionalize the party. Have a look around you,” Farage told conference attendees in his speech Friday.   Pollsters warned there were electoral risks for Reform in engaging with climate denial groups, at a time when voters are wary of all politicians’ aims with regard to net zero. “The primary focus for all voters is energy costs,” said Julian Gallie, head of research at Merlin Strategy. “However, pursuing an anti net zero agenda motivated explicitly by climate skepticism can be as deep a turn off as those who are pursuing a net zero target regardless of price costs.” Additional reporting by Dan Bloom.

MUNICH — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz opened the IAA auto show in Munich on Tuesday with a critique of the European Commission’s 2035 combustion engine ban. “We need more flexibility in regulation,” he said. “Unilateral political commitments to specific technologies are fundamentally the wrong economic policy approach.” The comments are a thinly veiled reference to the EU’s legislation, which forbids the sale of any new cars that emit CO2 from 2035, essentially banning the combustion engine — an unpopular move in Germany, home to some of the world’s biggest and most well-known car manufacturers. The CEOs of some of these companies — BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen — sat in the front row, emphatically nodding and clapping at Merz’s remarks. The issue is a crucial one for Berlin. Cars account for about 5 percent of Germany’s GDP but the industry is facing a triple whammy: a steep decline in sales in China that had been crucial to the bottom lines of German carmakers; a stumbling transition to electric vehicles that is leaving an opening for Chinese companies to make an entry into the European market; and chaos caused by Donald Trump’s car tariffs. With the far-right Alternative for Germany neck-and-neck with the Christian Democrats in opinion polls, Merz is struggling to ensure a future for an industry that Germany has dominated for over a century, thanks to its engineering prowess. It’s a sector that also employs some 800,000 people in the country. The argument is that flexibility on the EU’s targets would allow some of the traditional car industry to survive for just that little bit longer. Days prior, the three German carmakers presented their latest models with a strong focus on electric vehicles as they look to compete with their Chinese peers that have so far had the upper hand with their tech-glitzed EVs. BMW’s new all-electric iX3 SUV has 800 kilometers of range, making range anxiety “a thing of the past,” CEO Oliver Zipse told POLITICO in an interview. Zipse and his fellow European executives are set to meet with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday for the next strategic dialogue for the sector, where they are expected to lobby for significant changes to the 2035 legislation. They have political allies in making the plea. Italian business minister Adolfo Urso is eager for the 2035 legislation to be overturned. The conservative European People’s Party in the European Parliament included reversing the ban in last year’s election platform. Merz has taken a softer stance as a result of the coalition between his conservative Christian Democrats, which want the ban reversed, and the center-left Social Democrats, which argue the legislation needs to remain in place as part of a broader effort to tackle climate change. But Merz had help in his plea from the other speakers on Tuesday, leaving no room for a different interpretation of his meaning. “This ban is wrong. We need to remove it,” Markus Söder, the conservative premier of Bavaria, said ahead of the chancellor. “The CO2 goals of 2035 need to be adjusted to reality.” Hildegard Müller, the head of Germany’s car lobby VDA, pushed for the group’s 10-point plan, which argues the 2035 legislation should change its target from 100 percent zero-emission vehicles to 90 percent and allow for other powertrains like hybrids and range extenders and make space for alternative fuels, the industry argues, also meet climate goals. Those options would give an additional lease on life to the combustion engine.