Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Die europäische Sicherheitslage steht heute im Mittelpunkt. Mark Rutte, der NATO-Generalsekretär, kommt nach Berlin und trifft den Kanzler. Für Friedrich Merz ist dieses Gespräch zentral, denn es hängt die Frage über allem, wie sich Europa verteidigen soll, wenn Washington sich weiter zurückzieht. Gordon Repinski ordnet ein, welche Erwartungen an das Treffen geknüpft sind und welche Rolle eingefrorene russische Vermögen für die Ukraine dabei spielen Im 200-Sekunden-Interview spricht Franziska Brantner, Co-Vorsitzende der Grünen, über die Verteidigungsfähigkeit Europas. Sie erklärt, warum die Europäer Sicherheitsgarantien für die Ukraine vorbereiten müssen und weshalb eine kleinere Gruppe schneller vorangehen sollte. Im Anschluss berichtet Marion Soletty von POLITICO in Frankreich zu den Gesprächen zwischen Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius und seiner neuen französischen Amtskollegin Catherine Vautrin. Das FCAS-Projekt, ein gemeinsamer Kampfjet, steckt fest. Es geht um industrielle Führungsansprüche zwischen Dassault und Airbus und um die Frage, ob noch in diesem Jahr eine Einigung möglich ist. Am Ende ein Blick in die SPD, wo Generalsekretär Tim Klüssendorf mit einer wirtschaftsfreundlichen Rede überrascht und bei Arbeitgebern Zustimmung findet. 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. Legal Notice (Belgium) POLITICO SRL Forme sociale: Société à Responsabilité Limitée Siège social: Rue De La Loi 62, 1040 Bruxelles Numéro d’entreprise: 0526.900.436 RPM Bruxelles info@politico.eu www.politico.eu

High energy prices, risks on CBAM enforcement and promotion of lead markets, as well as increasing carbon costs are hampering domestic and export competitiveness with non-EU producers. The cement industry is fundamental to Europe’s construction value chain, which represents about 9 percent of the EU’s GDP. Its hard-to-abate production processes are also currently responsible for 4 percent of EU emissions, and it is investing heavily in measures aimed at achieving full climate neutrality by 2050, in line with the European Green Deal. Marcel Cobuz, CEO, TITAN Group  “We should take a longer view and ensure that the cement industry in EU stays competitive domestically and its export market shares are maintained.” However, the industry’s efforts to comply with EU environmental regulations, along with other factors, make it less competitive than more carbon-intensive producers from outside Europe. Industry body Cement Europe recently stated that, “without a competitive business model, the very viability of the cement industry and its prospects for industrial decarbonization are at risk.” Marcel Cobuz, member of the Board of the Global Cement and Concrete Association and CEO of TITAN Group, one of Europe’s leading producers, spoke with POLITICO Studio about the vital need for a clear policy partnership with Brussels to establish a predictable regulatory and financing framework to match the industry’s decarbonization ambitions and investment efforts to stay competitive in the long-term. POLITICO Studio: Why is the cement industry important to the EU economy?  Marcel Cobuz: Just look around and you will see how important it is. Cement helped to build the homes that we live in and the hospitals that care for us. It’s critical for our transport and energy infrastructure, for defense and increasingly for the physical assets supporting the digital economy. There are more than 200 cement plants across Europe, supporting nearby communities with high-quality jobs. The cement industry is also key to the wider construction industry, which employs 14.5 million people across the EU. At the same time, cement manufacturers from nine countries compete in the international export markets. PS: What differentiates Titan within the industry?  MC: We have very strong European roots, with a presence in 10 European countries. Sustainability is very much part of our DNA, so decarbonizing profitably is a key objective for us. We’ve reduced our CO2 footprint by nearly 25 percent since 1990, and we recently announced that we are targeting a similar reduction by 2030 compared to 2020. We are picking up pace in reducing emissions both by using conventional methods, like the use of alternative sources of low-carbon energy and raw materials, and advanced technologies. TITAN/photo© Nikos Daniilidis We have a large plant in Europe where we are exploring building one of the largest carbon capture projects on the continent, with support from the Innovation Fund, capturing close to two million tons of CO2 and producing close to three million tons of zero-carbon cement for the benefit of all European markets. On top of that, we have a corporate venture capital fund, which partners with startups from Europe to produce the materials of tomorrow with  very low or zero carbon. That will help not only TITAN but the whole industry to accelerate its way towards the use of new high-performance materials with a smaller carbon footprint. PS: What are the main challenges for the EU cement industry today?  MC: Several factors are making us less competitive than companies from outside the EU. Firstly, Europe is an expensive place when it comes to energy prices. Since 2021, prices have risen by close to 65 percent, and this has a huge impact on cement producers, 60 percent of whose costs are energy-related. And this level of costs is two to three times higher than those of our neighbors. We also face regulatory complexity compared to our outside competitors, and the cost of compliance is high. The EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) cost for the cement sector is estimated at €97 billion to €162 billion between 2023 and 2034. Then there is the need for low-carbon products to be promoted ― uptake is still at a very low level, which leads to an investment risk around new decarbonization technologies. > We should take a longer view and ensure that the cement industry in the EU > stays competitive domestically and its export market shares are maintained.” All in all, the playing field is far from level. Imports of cement into the EU have increased by 500 percent since 2016. Exports have halved ― a loss of value of one billion euros. The industry is reducing its cost to manufacture and to replace fossil fuels, using the waste of other industries, digitalizing its operations, and premiumizing its offers. But this is not always enough. Friendly policies and the predictability of a regulatory framework should accompany the effort. PS: In January 2026, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism will be fully implemented, aimed at ensuring that importers pay the same carbon price as domestic producers. Will this not help to level the playing field? MC: This move is crucial, and it can help in dealing with the increasing carbon cost. However, I believe we already see a couple of challenges regarding the CBAM. One is around self-declaration: importers declare the carbon footprint of their materials, so how do we avoid errors or misrepresentations? In time there should be audits of the importers’ industrial installations and co-operation with the authorities at source to ensure the data flow is accurate and constant. It really needs to be watertight, and the authorities need to be fully mobilized to make sure the real cost of carbon is charged to the importers. Also, and very importantly, we need to ensure that CBAM does not apply to exports from the EU to third countries, as carbon costs are increasingly a major factor making us uncompetitive outside the EU, in markets where we were present for more than 20 years. > CBAM really needs to be watertight, and the authorities need to be fully > mobilized to make sure the real cost of carbon is charged to the importers.” PS: In what ways can the EU support the European cement industry and help it to be more competitive? MC: By simplifying legislation and making it more predictable so we can plan our investments for the long term. More specifically, I’m talking about the revamping of the ETS, which in its current form implies a phase-down of CO2 rights over the next decade. First, we should take a longer view and ensure that the cement industry stays competitive and its export market shares are maintained, so a policy of more for longer should accompany the new ETS. > In export markets, the policy needs to ensure a level playing field for > European suppliers competing in international destination markets, through a > system of free allowances or CBAM certificates, which will enable exports to > continue.” We should look at it as a way of funding decarbonization. We could front-load part of ETS revenues in a fund that would support the development of technologies such as low-carbon materials development and CCS. The roll-out of Infrastructure for carbon capture projects such as transport or storage should also be accelerated, and the uptake of low-carbon products should be incentivized. More specifically on export markets, the policy needs to ensure a level playing field for European suppliers competing in international destination markets, through a system of free allowances or CBAM certificates, which will enable exports to continue. PS: Are you optimistic about the future of your industry in Europe?  MC: I think with the current system of phasing out CO2 rights, and if the CBAM is not watertight, and if energy prices remain several times higher than in neighboring countries, and if investment costs, particularly for innovating new technologies, are not going to be financed through ETS revenues, then there is an existential risk for at least part of the industry. Having said that, I’m optimistic that, working together with the European Commission we can identify the right policy making solutions to ensure our viability as a strategic industry for Europe. And if we are successful, it will benefit everyone in Europe, not least by guaranteeing more high-quality jobs and affordable and more energy-efficient materials for housing ― and a more sustainable and durable infrastructure in the decades ahead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Titan Group * The advertisement is linked to policy advocacy around industrial competitiveness, carbon pricing, and decarbonization in the EU cement and construction sectors, including the EU’s CBAM legislation, the Green Deal, and the proposed revision of the ETS. More information here.

LONDON — Rachel Reeves needs at least one good news story to sell. The under-fire U.K. finance minister is gearing up for a tricky budget next week — and slashing Brits’ energy bills could give her something to shout about. Officials in the Treasury and at No. 10 Downing Street are exploring ways to cut domestic energy costs by shifting some levies currently added to household bills into general taxation, said three government figures granted anonymity to discuss pre-budget planning.  Ministers are targeting a cut of between £150 and £170 on an annual household bill, according to one of the three figures. That would get Chancellor Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband halfway toward a totemic election promise of slashing bills by £300 by 2030 — and give the government something positive to pitch on budget day.  Officials are looking at “big numbers,” said another of the figures. “It could be a significant moment.”  A cut to VAT on energy bills is also under consideration, they said, echoing previous reports.  Number crunching by green policy wonks shows how Reeves, via those changes to levies and a potential VAT cut, could get the Treasury to its magic number.  PRIORITY: BILLS  Energy bills are the single biggest factor cited by voters as a cost-of-living concern, according to polls. Left-leaning think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research, which is highly influential in government circles, has called on Labour ministers to launch a “war on bills” campaign, modeled on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s approach in Australia.  The hope in the Treasury is that, by conjuring up a sum large enough to win some prominent headlines, Reeves might land a good news story on energy bills on a day otherwise set to be dominated by a “smorgasbord” of unpopular tax rises.  Energy prices were “still very high for people,” Reeves acknowledged earlier this month. She pledged to make action on the cost of living “one of the three priorities for the budget,” alongside reducing national debt and protecting the National Health Service.  Last week, nine Labour MPs, including the chair of parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, Toby Perkins, wrote to Reeves urging her to move all social and environmental levies from bills into taxation.  Advocates regard this as a fairer way to ensure the costs fall on those with the broadest shoulders.  “The public wants to see action to reduce energy bills, which now ranks as the most worrying household expense amongst the population,” the letter, coordinated by charity the MCS Foundation, said.  OPTIONS  A dizzying array of levies are charged on bills to pay for renewable energy projects, energy-efficiency schemes and the costs of maintaining a stable electricity system. Collectively, they make up around 18 percent of the average electricity bill.  It isn’t yet clear which might be moved into taxation, but the first government figure above said the so-called Renewables Obligation — a charge that provides an income for older clean energy projects, some built 20 years ago — is the leading candidate to be shifted onto taxation.  The think tank Nesta, which has calculated the value of the reform, says it could potentially cut electricity bills by £86. The New Economics Foundation think tank puts the figure at around £95.  The government is also looking at the Energy Company Obligation, according to reports, which is currently levied on electricity and gas bills. That could instead be paid for using spending already allocated to the £13.2 billion Warm Homes Plan.  The Warm Homes Plan is expected to pay for energy-efficiency measures, solar panels and electric heating for poorer households — but full details have not yet been finalized.  Cornwall Insight, a consultancy which forecasts future trends in the energy market, said Tuesday that cutting VAT on energy bills from 5 percent to zero at the budget could bring down annual bills by a further £80.  NET ZERO CONSENT  Ministers hope taking direct action on bills will shore up public confidence in the government’s wider energy and climate agenda, which includes a stretching target to almost fully decarbonize electricity by 2030 and hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  The goal in the long run is to reduce U.K. dependence on gas, the volatile price of which has done major damage to household finances in recent years.  But the problem for the government is that actions required to achieve that strategy are — in the short term at least — pushing up bills. The costs of investing in new clean power sources like offshore wind farms, along with the electricity lines and pylons required to clean up the energy system, are all adding to costs.  The independent National Energy System Operator expects charges on energy bills to pay for upgrading the power grid to hit £93.48 next year, a jump of £40. Further increases are anticipated as vast pylon-building projects gather steam.  “This is a really delicate time for prices and their link to the legitimacy of the energy transition,” said Adam Berman, director of policy and advocacy at Energy UK, speaking in September. If ministers don’t look at ways to lower bills now, he argued, “they will be lining themselves up for a very challenging start to next year.”  Opposition parties have seized on this weakness in the government’s energy strategy. The Conservatives are calling for a Cheap Power Plan (rather than a clean one). Nigel Farage’s Reform UK said it would tear up expensive government contracts with offshore wind projects and abandon net zero altogether.  “Bills are the number one public concern,” said Sam Alvis, director of energy at the IPPR. “Regardless of whether it’s to underpin support for the clean power mission, any government needs to show it’s heard that message from the public that they want action on cost. Without that sense of public buy-in now, there’s no hope for any longer term economic or energy reforms.”  A Treasury spokesperson confirmed action on the cost of living was a priority for Reeves but said: “We do not comment on budget speculation.” 

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 — Gavin Newsom can’t get out of a meeting or a talk at the international climate talks here without being swarmed by reporters and diplomats eager for a quote, a handshake, a photo. On a tour Tuesday of a cultural center with Gov. Helder Barbalho, the leader of the Brazilian state hosting the talks, a passerby recognized them both. “There’s the governor,” he exclaimed. “And there’s the California governor.” Later in the day, as Newsom rode up an escalator packed with reporters and international officials on his way to deliver a speech, a bystander shouted: “The escalator’s not broken for you!” — a dig at President Donald Trump, who once had an escalator malfunction on him at the United Nations. Newsom grinned wide: “Oh, I like that.” The adulation was gold for a governor with presidential aspirations as he steps into a power vacuum. The Trump administration is trying to dismantle climate policies both at home and abroad, and other likely Democratic presidential contenders are absent from the United Nations climate talks. Seeing a chance to plant his green flag on an international stage, Newsom is embracing the role of climate champion as his own party backs away at home and the politics of the issue shift rightward. It’s a role fitting Newsom’s instincts: anti-Trump, pro-environment and pro-technology, and with a political antenna for the upside of picking fights, finding opportunity in defiance. “We’re at peak influence because of the flatness of the surrounding terrain with the Trump administration and all the anxiety,” he told POLITICO from the sidelines of a green investor conference in Brazil on Monday. Newsom’s profile has never been higher. Just days before traveling to Brazil, he celebrated a decisive win in his redistricting campaign to boost Democrats in the midterms. He is polling at or near the top of presidential primary shortlists, and is amassing an army of small-dollar donors across the states. The governor couldn’t walk down the hallway at the conference without getting swarmed, undeniably the star of the talks on their second formal day. At one point, security officials had to physically shove away one man repeatedly. Conference attendees yelled out “Keep up the social media!” and “Go Gavin!” (and the occasional “Who is that?”). The first question by the Brazilian press: Are you running for president? And from business people: Are you coming back? Yet in touching down here — and in emphasizing his climate advocacy more broadly — Newsom is assuming a significant risk to his post-gubernatorial ambitions. The rest of the world may wish America were more like California, but the country itself — even Democrats who will decide the 2028 primary — are far more skeptical. What looks like courage abroad can read as out-of-touch back home, in a country where voters, including Democrats, routinely rank any number of issues, including the economy, health care, and cost-of-living, as more pressing than global warming. THE STAGE IS SET Other blue states were already backing away from Newsom’s gas-powered vehicle phase-out even before Congress and Trump ended it this summer, and another possible Democratic contender for president, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, may pull his state out of a regional emissions trading market as part of a budget deal, a move seen as tempering attacks from the right on climate. Even in California, where a new Carnegie Endowment for International Peace poll finds that Californians increasingly want their state government to play a bigger role on the international stage, trade trumped climate change as voters’ top priority for international talks for the first time this year. “There’s not a poll or a pundit that suggests that Democrats should be talking about this,” Newsom acknowledged in an interview. “I’m not naive to that either, but I think it’s the way we talk about it that’s the bigger issue, and I think all of us, including myself, need to improve on that and that’s what I aim to do.” In his 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden prevailed not after embracing — but rather, distancing himself from — the “Green New Deal,” which Newsom acknowledged this month had become a “pejorative” on the right. Four years later, Trump pilloried Kamala Harris in the general election for her past positions on climate change. Newsom is already facing relentless attacks from the right on energy: two years ago, in what was seen at the time as a shadow presidential debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was skewering Newsom for his phase-out of gas-powered vehicles: “He is walking his people into a big-time disaster,” DeSantis said. And that was before Republicans began combing Newsom’s social media posts for material to weaponize in future ads. Even Newsom’s predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, who made climate change his signature issue, acknowledged “climate is not the big issue in South Carolina or in Maine or in Iowa.” “Climate is important,” Brown said in an interview. “But it’s not like immigration, it’s not like homelessness, it’s not like taxes, it’s not like inflation, not like the price of a house.” Still, Brown cast climate as an existential issue. “It’s way beyond presidential politics. It is about our survival and your well being for the rest of your life,” he said. “I think he’s doing it because he thinks it’s profoundly important, and certainly politics is not divorced entirely from reality.” Newsom’s inner circle senses a political upside, too. His first-ever visit to the climate talks comes not just from his own or California’s ambitions, but from the vacuum left by Trump. “The more that Trump recedes, like a tide going out, the more coral is exposed. And that’s where Newsom can really flourish,” said Jason Elliott, a former deputy chief of staff and an adviser since Newsom’s early days in elected office. Newsom is “going against the grain,” he continued. “It’s easier to be some of these purple or red state governors in other places in the United States that just wash their hands of EVs the minute that the going gets tough. But that’s just not Newsom.” On climate, Newsom’s attempts to stand alone sit well within the California tradition. Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger — the Democrat and the Republican who preceded him — both made international climate diplomacy central to their legacies. “We have been at this for decades and decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations,” Newsom said. “That’s an important message at this time as well, because we’re so unreliable as a nation, and we’re destroying alliances and relationships.” Also in Brazil for part of the talks were Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, both Democrats, and mayors of several major U.S. cities, like Kate Gallego of Phoenix. But their pitch didn’t land with quite the same heft as California’s, a state filled with billion-dollar tech companies that, as Newsom frequently boasts, recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy. He attributed his environmental streak to his family, citing his father, William Newsom, a judge and longtime conservationist. As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation composting mandate and plastic bag ban. As lieutenant governor to Brown, Newsom called himself “a solution in search of a problem” because Brown had embraced climate so prominently. But Brown said Newsom has made the issue his own. “I think Newsom comes to this naturally,” he said. Newsom pulls from a wide range of influences; prolific texting buddies include former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who ran for president largely on a climate platform, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. He frequently cites the example of President Ronald Reagan, the Republican — and former California governor — who embraced an environmental agenda. “I talk to everybody,” Newsom said. He spoke in almost spiritual terms about his upcoming trip deeper into the Amazon, where he’s scheduled to meet with community stewards and walk through the forest. “When we were all opening up those first books, learning geography, one of the first places we all learn about is the Amazon,” he said. “It’s so iconic, so evocative, so it informs so much of what inspires us as children to care about the Earth and Mother Nature. It connects us to our creator.” THE MID-TRANSITION HURT As governor, Newsom hasn’t had the luxury his predecessors enjoyed of setting ambitious emissions targets, but instead is working in a period beset by natural disasters and tensions with both the left and moderate wings of his party. His aides have dubbed it the remarkably un-sexy “mid-transition”: The deadlines to show results are here, they’re out of reach — and in the interim, voters are mad about energy prices. As a result, he’s pushed to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and directed billions toward wildfire prevention and clean-energy manufacturing — but also reversed past positions against nuclear and Big Oil, including extending the life of California’s last nuclear power plant, pausing a profit cap on refineries and expanding oil drilling in Kern County. Inside the administration, those moves are seen as not a tempering of environmental ambition but a pragmatic recalibration. “We’re transitioning to the other side, and there’s a lot of white water in that. And that’s reality. You’ve got to deal with cards that are dealt,” Newsom said in an interview in São Paulo. But it also exposes him to criticism from both the left and moderate wings of his own party. Newsom’s 2023 speech excoriating oil companies to the United Nations in New York City was one of his proudest moments of his career. This year, he faced banners attacking him: “If you can’t take on Big Oil, can you take on Trump?” At the same time, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, has seized on high gas prices in his campaign to succeed Newsom as governor in 2026 — and is partly blaming past governors’ climate policies. Adding to the crunch are the record-setting wildfires that have beset Newsom’s tenure as governor. They’ve not only devastated communities from Paradise in Northern California to Altadena in Los Angeles County but buoyed both electricity prices as utilities spend billions on fire-proofing their grid and property insurance prices as insurers flee the state. It’s this duality that informs Newsom’s approach. “We’ve got to address costs or we’ll lose the debate,” Newsom said. “This is the hard part.” A business moderate known to hand out personal phones programmed with his number to tech CEOs, Newsom is now pitching his climate fight as one focused on economic competitiveness and jobs. Lauren Sanchez, the chair of the state’s powerful air and climate agency, the California Air Resources Board, called the state’s international leadership the governor’s “north star” on climate change. “He is in the business of ensuring that California is relevant in the future economy,” she said. In Brazil, Newsom made the time to stop by a global investors summit in São Paulo, where he held an hour-long roundtable with green bankers, philanthropists and energy execs. They told him they wanted his climate pacts with Brazilian governments to do more on economic ties. So, Newsom said, he started drafting a new agreement there and then, throwing a paper napkin on the table in reference to the cocktail napkin deal that formed Southwest. “Let’s get this done before I leave,” Newsom said he told his Brazilian counterparts. “We move quickly.” If the moment reflected California’s swagger, it also laid bare its limitations. The Constitution limits states from contributing money to international funds, like the tropical rainforest preservation fund that is the Brazilians’ signature proposal at the talks. And even at home, Trump is still making Newsom’s balancing act hard: Newsom floated backfilling the Trump administration’s removal of electric vehicle incentives with state rebates, then backtracked, conceding the state doesn’t have enough funds. And on Tuesday, reports came out that the Trump administration was planning to offer offshore oil and gas leases for the first time in decades off the coast of California — putting Newsom on the defensive. Newsom called those plans “dead on arrival.” “I also think it remarkable that he didn’t promote it in his backyard at Mar-a-Lago; he didn’t promote it off the coast of Florida,” Newsom added.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Ein besonderer Tag für den Kanzler und ein politischer Geburtstag mit viel Berliner Realpolitik. Friedrich Merz wird 70 Jahre alt. Während er in der Fraktion gefeiert wird, warten Streit über Rente, Wehrpflicht und Bürgergeld auf ihn. Gordon Repinski blickt auf den Tag des Kanzlers und formuliert fünf politische Wünsche für das neue Lebensjahr. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview spricht Roland Koch, früherer Ministerpräsident von Hessen und Weggefährte über Freundschaft, Geduld und Führungskraft. Er erklärt, warum Merz Stabilität braucht, wie schwer die Koalition wirklich zu führen ist und weshalb der Kanzler international schon überzeugt, aber innenpolitisch die Überzeugung noch auf sich warten lässt. Danach geht es mit Hans von der Burchard nach Brüssel und Straßburg. Dort steht das Europäische Parlament vor einem Machtproblem. Die alte Mehrheit aus Christ- und Sozialdemokraten bröckelt. Rechte Fraktionen gewinnen an Einfluss und gefährden zentrale Gesetze wie den geplanten Bürokratieabbau. Ein Thema, das auch den Kanzler trifft und ärgert. Die Machthaber-Folge über Friedrich Merz findet ihr hier und das Freitags-Spezial mit Georg Mascolo und Katja Gloger 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.

BRUSSELS — Loopholes in the European Union’s new interim climate target increase the danger of missing the 2050 net-zero goal, the bloc’s top scientific advisor warned.  The EU’s 27 governments on Wednesday agreed to reduce their planet-warming emissions by up to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2040, but riddled the legislation with offsetting options and revision clauses that could significantly weaken the target.  “I see this as a political compromise that at least keeps the 2050 target within reach,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, an economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in an interview with POLITICO. “But the risk of not achieving it has, of course, now increased rather than decreased.” Edenhofer chairs the EU’s scientific advisory board on climate change, an independent body tasked with making policy recommendations on global warming, which first suggested the bloc reduce its emissions by 90 to 95 percent by 2040.  While the deal reached Wednesday keeps the headline 90 percent figure, it sets the EU’s domestic emissions cuts at 85 percent, allowing the bloc to meet the remainder by paying other countries to reduce pollution through purchases of so-called carbon credits.  Governments also introduced a clause requiring the EU to reassess the target every five years in light of economic conditions or high energy prices, with the option to allow member countries to purchase additional carbon credits. The European Commission’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra described the deal on Wednesday as “absolutely science-based.” | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images The board took issue with the use of credits, warning that outsourcing pollution cuts would divert much-needed investments abroad and slow the domestic pace of decarbonization.  Edenhofer reiterated the concerns about credits, but singled out the revision clause as potentially jeopardizing the bloc’s net-zero target.  “If the targets are constantly being watered down via the revision clause, that’s not a good idea, because then the 2050 target will also not be achievable,” he warned.  The European Commission’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra described the deal on Wednesday as “absolutely science-based.”  Asked whether he agrees, Edenhofer said: “The 90 percent are certainly science-based, but the 5 percentage points [of credits] depend on the circumstances… 85 percent is certainly below the limit. I would say it is a political compromise and should be seen as such.”  Edenhofer also warned against scapegoating climate efforts for the EU’s economic woes.  “The European economy certainly has a competitiveness problem,” particularly in high-polluting industries and car manufacturers, he acknowledged. “But climate policy is very often blamed for a lack of industrial policy.”  He was particularly critical of a recent campaign by parts of the German chemical industry to abolish the EU’s carbon market, the heart of its climate legislation.  “I find that utterly ridiculous,” he said.  The industry’s concerns about the carbon market’s current trajectory, which requires companies to hit net-zero before 2040, are valid, he added, which is why he supports limited reforms. But demands to abolish the EU’s CO2 price are “unhelpful” in his view.  “Fundamentally, messages that climate policy is a nice luxury and now it’s time to get back to the important things are absurd,” he added. “It’s grotesque. Climate impacts are real. And this is not some trivial matter — it’s about securing long-term prosperity.”

President Donald Trump sees Hungary’s Viktor Orban as something of a kindred spirit, a model for the sweeping reforms of his own second term. That’s exactly why Europeans are nervous ahead of the president’s first face-to-face meeting with Orban at the White House, weeks after the U.S. finally imposed sanctions on two Russian oil companies. Orban is coming to the White House Friday squarely focused on obtaining an exemption on the sanctions. People inside and outside the administration haven’t ruled out the idea Trump might grant one, pointing to Hungary’s close relationship with both Russia and Trump as factors in Orban’s favor. An exemption for Hungary would amount to a major carveout of Trump’s sanctions regime against Russia, not to mention his criticism of the European nations still purchasing Russian oil. It would also be a symbolic setback for Ukrainian and European leaders who have spent months using a unified voice to prod the president to increase pressure on Moscow. “We’re fairly used to these efforts to undermine European unity, and we know [Trump] likes to deal with leaders one-on-one,” predicted an EU official granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. If Trump grants the exemption, “it may be more of a symbolic setback in terms of the message it sends to Putin and the rest of the world about the lack of resolve to really punish Russia. In reality, it will be harder to achieve.” After dangling the threat for months, Trump last month finallyimposed additional sanctions on two Russian oil companies when the Kremlin made clear that it still isn’t ready to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. The president, who has criticized European countries for continuing to import Russian oil and gas, hopes that increased economic pressure will eventually push Moscow into peace talks. Orban has called Trump’s sanctions on Russia a “mistake,” arguing that the country is not ready to abruptly stop its reliance on Moscow’s oil due to economic circumstances. “Hungary is very dependent on Russian oil and gas,” he said last month. “And without them, energy prices will skyrocket, causing shortages in our supplies.” Trump could be inclined to grant a carve-out for Orban, given his affinity for the populist leader who has seized control of numerous state agencies and tested the resilience of Hungarian democracy. People in and close to the Trump administration also point to Hungary’s willingness to engage with Russia — making it something of a pariah within NATO and the European Union — and its interest in defending “Western values” as factors in Orban’s favor. Administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, have voiced appreciation for Hungary’s support of Trump’s policies and Orban’s efforts to be a mediator between Ukraine and Russia. Hungarian leaders have propped up Trump unequivocally, and former Trump officials have made clear that Hungary stands to be rewarded for their long-term support, with one prize being a potential peace summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest. “Holding a summit in Budapest, which would be a prestige event for the Hungarians, and cast them in the role of peacemakers, it would be a benefit for them, and thus ideally incentivize other countries within Europe to tack closer to the administration’s line,” said Andrew Peek, Trump’s former senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council. Specifically, Hungary has stood out against other European countries for its tough positions on immigration. Trump and Orban’s relationship remained close during Trump’s years in the political wilderness. “When the president was out of office, the Hungarians and Orban talked about some of the injustices he was facing,” which “resonates rightfully with people in the White House,” Peek said. Once back in office, Trump has waged a fast and furious assault on the federal bureaucracy and made brazen moves expanding the government’s reach into civil society through pressure campaigns against the media, universities and the private sector. His actions mirror Orban’s in his country more than a decade earlier. And yet, Orban is making only his first visit to the White House some 10 months into the president’s term — after a number of other European leaders have been there multiple times. “This ideological affinity hasn’t been all that beneficial to the Hungarians. They haven’t gotten much from this White House,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “There’s an oxymoron in that, yes, it’s an ideology they share, but the ideology is one of national selfishness, so even if you’re aligned in the approach, the ideology says you’re on your own.” A White House official, granted anonymity to preview the meeting, said there would likely be several “deliverables” announced during the meeting — deals on expanded trade, defense partnerships or possibly sociocultural endeavors. And while exempting Hungary from new sanctions on Russian oil would be exceedingly complex in practice, requiring new instructions from the Treasury Department and the willingness of financial institutions in Europe to accept them, Trump could still announce a change in policy without warning once he and Orban are seated face to face beside the Oval Office fireplace. The administration’s love of Hungary has been on display at the highest levels of the State Department. Speaking at a Hungary Embassy event last month, Landau commended Hungary for continuing to have a “relationship” with Russia despite its “history” fighting communism under the Soviet Union. MAGA world beyond the West Wing has also celebrated Hungary as a model for the future of conservatism. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a 2022 interview that “modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model,” while media personalities like Tucker Carlson have traveled to Budapest to cheer on the government’s focus on keeping Hungary “Christian” by keeping out migrants and enacting pro-natalist policies. Orban has not extended the same welcome to Ukraine as other countries in Europe. He has been outspoken on vetoing any prospect of Ukraine ever joining the EU – a project that would need unanimous consent by all EU member states. He’s said Ukraine should be in a “strategic partnership” with the EU, but not a member. Landau also spoke about Hungary’s “values” alignment with the U.S. and the role that plays in their relationship. “I just want to thank Hungary again for its strong stewardship of Western values of our European heritage at a time when that is under attack, frankly … by forces within Europe, no less, not even to mention the sources outside of Europe,” Landau said at the embassy event commemorating Hungary’s national day.

It’s been a decade since the U.S. and Europe pushed the world to embrace a historic agreement to stop the planet’s runaway warming. The deal among nearly 200 nations offered a potential “turning point for the world,” then-U.S. President Barack Obama said. Eventually, almost every country on Earth signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, a pact whose success would rest on peer pressure, rising ambition and the economics of a clean energy revolution. But 10 years later, the actions needed to fulfill those hopes are falling short. The United States has quit the deal — twice. President Donald Trump is throttling green energy projects at home and finding allies to help him undermine climate initiatives abroad, while inking trade deals that commit countries to buying more U.S. fossil fuels. Europe remains on track to meet its climate commitments, but its resolve is wavering, as price-weary voters and the rise of far-right parties raise doubts about how quickly the bloc can deliver its pledge to turn away from fossil fuels. Paris has helped ingrain climate change awareness in popular culture and policy, led countries and companies to pledge to cut their carbon pollution to zero and helped steer a wave of investments into clean energy. Scientists say it appears to have lessened the odds of the most catastrophic levels of warming. On the downside, oil and gas production hasn’t yet peaked, and climate pollution and temperatures are still rising — with the latter just tenths of a degree from the tipping point agreed in Paris. But the costs of green energy have fallen so much that, in most parts of the world, it’s the cheapest form of power and is being installed at rates unthinkable 10 years ago. World leaders and diplomats who are in Brazil starting this week for the United Nations’ annual climate talks will face a test to stand up for Paris in the face of Trump’s opposition while highlighting that its goals are both necessary and beneficial. The summit in the Amazonian port city of Belém was supposed to be the place where rich and poor countries would celebrate their progress and commit themselves to ever-sharper cuts in greenhouse gas pollution. Instead, U.S. contempt for global climate efforts and a muddled message from Europe are adding headwinds to a moment that is far more turbulent than the one in which the Paris Agreement was adopted. Some climate veterans are still optimists — to a point. “I think that the basic architecture is resistant to Trump’s destruction,” said John Podesta, chair of the board of the liberal Center for American Progress, who coordinated climate policy under Obama and former President Joe Biden. But that resistance could wilt if the U.S. stays outside the agreement, depriving the climate movement of American leadership and support, he said. “If all that’s gone, and it’s gone for a long time, I don’t know whether the structure holds together,” Podesta added. Other climate diplomats say the cooperative spirit of 2015 would be hard to recreate now, which is why acting on Paris is so essential. “If we had to renegotiate Paris today, we’d never get the agreement that we had 10 years ago,” said Rachel Kyte, the United Kingdom’s special climate representative. “But we can also look to these extraordinary data points, which show that the direction of travel is very clear,” she said, referring to growth of clean energy. “And most people who protect where their money is going to be are interested in that direction of travel.” THE PARIS PARADOX One thing that hasn’t faded is the business case for clean energy. If anything, the economic drivers behind the investments that Paris helped unleash have surpassed even what the Paris deal’s authors anticipated. But the political will to keep countries driving forward has stalled in some places as the United States — the world’s largest economy, sole military superpower and historically biggest climate polluter — attacks its very foundation. Trump’s attempts to undermine the agreement, summed up by the 2017 White House slogan “Pittsburgh, not Paris,” has affected European ambitions as well, French climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana told reporters late last month. “I have never seen such aggressivity against national climate policy all over because of the U.S.,” said Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris Agreement. “So we are really confronted with an ideological battle, a cultural battle, where climate is in that package the U.S. government wants to defeat.” The White House said Trump is focused on developing U.S. oil and engaging with world leaders on energy issues, rather than what it dubs the “green new scam.” The U.S. will not send high-level representatives to COP30. “The Green New Scam would have killed America if President Trump had not been elected to implement his commonsense energy agenda,” said Taylor Rogers, a spokesperson. “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.” Trump is not the only challenge facing Paris, of course. Even under Obama, the U.S. insisted that the Paris climate pollution targets had to be nonbinding, avoiding the need for a Senate ratification vote that would most likely fail. But unlike previous climate pacts that the U.S. had declined to join, all countries — including, most notably, China — would have to submit a pollution-cutting plan. The accord left it up to the governments themselves to carry out their own pledges and to push laggards to do better. An unusual confluence of political winds helped drive the bargaining. Obama, who was staking part of his legacy on getting a global climate agreement, had spent the year leading up to Paris negotiating a separate deal with China in which both countries committed to cutting their world-leading pollution. France, the host of the Paris talks, was also determined to strike a worldwide pact. In the year that followed, more than 160 countries submitted their initial plans to tackle climate change domestically and began working to finish the rules that would undergird the agreement. “The Paris Agreement isn’t a machine that churns out ambition. It basically reflects back to us the level of ambition that we have agreed to … and suggests what else is needed to get back on track,” said Kaveh Guilanpour, vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a negotiator for the United Kingdom during the Paris talks. “Whether countries do that or not, it’s essentially then a matter for them.” Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former environment minister and a lead negotiator of the Paris Agreement’s carbon crediting mechanism, called the deal an “incredible feat” — but not a self-executing one. “The problem is now it’s really up to countries as well as cities, regions, companies and financial institutions to act,” she said. “It’s not a treaty thing anymore — it’s now, ‘Do the work.’” WHEN GREEN TURNS GRAY Signs of discord are not hard to find around the globe. China is tightening its grip on clean energy manufacturing and exports, ensuring more countries have access to low-cost renewables, but creating tensions in places that also want to benefit from jobs and revenue from making those goods and fear depending too much on one country. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former United Nations climate envoy, eliminated his country’s consumer carbon tax and is planning to tap more natural gas to toughen economic defenses against the United States. The European Union spent the past five years developing a vast web of green regulations and sectoral measures, and the bloc estimates that it’s roughly on track to meet those goals. But many of the EU’s 27 governments — under pressure from the rising far right, high energy prices, the decline of traditional industry and Russia’s war against Ukraine — are now demanding that the EU reevaluate many of those policies. Still, views within the bloc diverge sharply, with some pushing for small tweaks and others for rolling back large swaths of legislation. “Europe must remain a continent of consistency,” French President Emmanuel Macron said after a meeting of EU leaders in October. “It must step up on competitiveness, but it must not give up on its [climate] goals.” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in contrast, said after the same meeting that he felt vindicated about his country’s long-standing opposition to the EU’s green agenda: “In most European capitals, people today think differently about these exaggerated European climate ambitions.” Worldwide, most countries have not submitted their latest carbon-cutting plans to the United Nations. While the plans that governments have announced mostly expand on their previous ones, they still make only modest reductions against what is needed to limit Earth’s warming since the preindustrial era to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Exceeding that threshold, scientists say, would lead to more lives lost and physical and economic damage that would be ever harder to recover from with each tenth of a degree of additional warming. The U.N.’s latest report showing the gap between countries’ new pledges and the Paris targets found that the world is on track for between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees of warming, a marginal difference from plans submitted in 2020 that is largely canceled out when the U.S. pledge is omitted. Policies in place now are pointing toward 2.8 degrees of warming. “We need unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gas emissions now in an ever-compressing timeframe and amid a challenging geopolitical context,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme. But doing so also makes sense, she added. “This where the market is showing that these kind of investments in smart, clean and green is actually driving jobs and opportunities. This is where the future lies.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message Tuesday that overshooting the 1.5-degrees target of Paris was now inevitable in the coming years imploring leaders to rapidly roll out renewables and stop expanding oil, gas and coal to ensure that overshoot was short-lived. “We’re in a huge mess,” said Bill Hare, a longtime climate scientist who founded the policy institute Climate Analytics. Greenhouse gas pollution hasn’t fallen, and action has flat lined even as climate-related disasters have increased. “I think what’s upcoming is a major test for the Paris Agreement, probably the major test. Can this agreement move forward under the weight of all of these challenges?” Hare asked. “If it can’t do that, governments are going to be asking about the benefits of it, frankly.” That doesn’t mean all is lost. In 2015, the world was headed for around 4 degrees Celsius of warming, an amount that researchers say would have been devastating for much of the planet. Today, that projection is roughly a degree Celsius lower. “I think a lot of us in Paris were very dubious at the time that we would ever limit warming to 1.5,” said Elliot Diringer, a former climate official who led the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions’ international program during the Paris talks. “The question is whether we are better off by virtue of the Paris Agreement,” he said. “I think the answer is yes. Are we where we need to be? Absolutely not.” GREEN TECHNOLOGY DEFYING EXPECTATIONS In addition, the adoption of clean energy technology has moved even faster than projected — sparking what one climate veteran has called a shift in global climate politics. “We are no longer in a world in which only climate politics has a leading role and a substantial role, but increasingly, climate economics,” said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015. “Yes, politics is important; no longer as important as it was 10 years ago.” Annual solar deployment globally is 15 times greater than the International Energy Agency predicted in 2015, according to a recent analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a U.K. nonprofit. Renewables now account for more than 90 percent of new power capacity added globally every year, BloombergNEF reported. China is deploying record amounts of renewables and lowering costs for countries such as Brazil and Pakistan, which has seen solar installations skyrocket. Even in the United States, where Trump repealed many of Biden’s tax breaks and other incentives, BloombergNEF predicts that power companies will continue to deploy green sources, in large part because they’re often the fastest source of new electricity. Costs for wind and batteries and falling, too. Electric vehicle sales are soaring in many countries, thanks in large part to the huge number of inexpensive vehicles being pumped out by China’s BYD, the world’s largest EV-maker. Worldwide clean energy investments are now twice as much as fossil fuels spending, according to the International Energy Agency. “Today, you can actually talk about deploying clean energy technologies just because of their cost competitiveness and ability to lower energy system costs,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director of modeling and analysis at the research institution Energy Innovation. “You don’t actually even have to say ‘climate’ for a lot of them, and that just wasn’t true 10 years ago.” The economic trends of the past decade have been striking, said Todd Stern, the U.S. climate envoy who negotiated the Paris Agreement. “Paris is something that was seen all over the world, seen by other countries, seen in boardrooms, as the first time in more than 20 years when you finally got heads of government saying, ‘Yes, let’s do this,’” he said. “And that’s not the only reason why there was tremendous technological development, but it sure didn’t hurt.” Still, limits exist to how far businesses can take the clean energy transition on their own. “You need government intervention of some kind, whether that’s a stick or a carrot, to push the economy towards a low-carbon trajectory,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary general of policy at the International Chamber of Commerce. “If governments press the brakes on climate action or seriously start to soft pedal, then it does have a limiting effect.” Brazil, the host of COP30, says it wants to demonstrate that multilateralism still works and is relevant to peoples’ lives and capable of addressing the climate impacts communities around the world are facing. But the goal of this year’s talks might be even more straightforward, said Guilanpour, the former negotiator. “If we come out of COP30 demonstrating that the Paris Agreement is alive and functioning,” he said, “I think in the current context, that is pretty newsworthy of itself.” Nicolas Camut in Paris, Zi-Ann Lum in Ottawa, Karl Mathiesen in London and Zia Weise in Brussels contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — For six years, the European Union’s efforts to fight climate change have been on an upward swing. That came to an end on Wednesday morning in messy, exhausted scenes.  After a marathon meeting that ran through Tuesday night and eventually ended a little after 9 a.m. the next morning, a majority of the bloc’s 27 governments agreed on new targets to cut pollution — but only by weakening existing laws and slowing domestic efforts designed to cut down on that very same pollution.  The compromise was met with relief by many countries and European Commission officials, who had feared an embarrassing collapse that would have hamstrung the EU on the eve of the COP30 U.N. climate talks in Brazil starting Thursday. But it also underscored a swing in political momentum. After half a decade of green victories on climate policy, a much more skeptical group of countries and parties now has the upper hand. In an interview just after the talks ended, the Commission’s climate chief Wopke Hoekstra hailed the EU’s continuing “leadership role” on climate issues. But the commissioner was candid about the political and economic realities — high energy costs, the rise of right-wing populists and declining industrial confidence — that had strengthened critics of the green agenda. The EU was “staying the course” on fighting climate change, he told POLITICO, but added “it would be foolish to use the recipe of the past. We’re facing massive change, so we need to adapt to that change.” Ministers also agreed on a target for 2035 — a requirement under the terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement that was due to be delivered earlier this year in advance of the COP30 talks. The ministers were unable to agree to a single number, instead promising a nonbinding cut between 66.25 and 72.5 percent. The final deal on the binding 2040 goal came up short of the 90 percent cut in domestic pollution below 1990 levels, which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had made the key green pledge in her reelection campaign.  Instead, ministers on Wednesday agreed an 85 percent cut in domestic emissions by 2040. Governments intend to achieve the remaining 5 percentage points by paying other countries to reduce pollution on the bloc’s behalf, a system of purchases known as carbon credits.  The deal also opened the door to outsourcing additional efforts as part of a wide-ranging revision clause that will see the Commission tasked with considering amending the target every five years depending on factors such as energy prices or economic troubles. “Embarrassing and short sighted,” was the assessment of Diederik Samsom, the former top-ranking Commission official who was a primary architect of the European Green Deal policy package during von der Leyen’s first mandate — though he said it was unlikely the carbon credits would be used as they would cost just as much as cutting emissions at home, but without the added benefits of investment and innovation. “The Green Deal still holds, since its rationale is largely economic … but the lack of political courage amongst European ministers is worrying,” said Samsom, who also served as Hoekstra’s chief of staff for a few months. These major gifts to countries like France, which had pushed for the credit system, were still not enough to strike a deal on Wednesday. Italy, supported by Poland and Romania, led a blocking minority that refused to budge until they were granted key concessions on existing climate laws.  To win them over, ministers also agreed to delay by one year the rollout of the EU’s carbon pricing system for heating and fuel emissions, known as ETS2. And they asked to extend the use of biofuels and other low-carbon fuels in transport in the future, which could weaken the agreed 2035 ban on new combustion-engine cars.  Watering down existing tools for cutting emissions in order to land a deal on a future target created a challenge all of its own, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank. “The target is very ambitious, and we need all tools to deliver on it. Dilemma is how to get there.” Those tweaks came on top of concessions already granted in technical talks over the past few weeks, which include permitting heavy industry to pollute more and revising the target downward if the EU’s forests absorb less carbon dioxide than expected.  “Instead of climate protection, the ministers end up with political self-deception,” said Michael Bloss, a Greens MEP from Germany. Poland was one of the key holdouts and ultimately refused to vote in favor of the target even though it was granted a delay in the ETS2, which Secretary of State for Climate Krzysztof Bolesta said “was one of our main demands.” Poland was accused of holding hostage the 2035 climate target, which needed unanimous support, over the delay on ETS2, said three diplomats involved in the negotiations. A Polish official said any discussions on the 2035 goal and the postponement of the ETS2 were part of a “package deal” sought by several countries. These officials were granted anonymity to disclose the details of the talks. But even with that concession, the target was still the lowest level of ambition. “We were forced to accept the lower end of the range to prevent certain countries from blocking this agreement,” said Monique Barbut, the French environment minister.  But that shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign the EU is no longer a global climate leader, according to Barbut. “We have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. Hoekstra framed the deal as a new phase of pragmatic climate policymaking that incorporated the views of traditionally resistant countries, rather than sidelining them. He argued the past approach had failed to protect the bloc from industrial decline and dependence on countries such as China.  “In the past, we have been gambling with our independence and our competitiveness in a way that, frankly speaking, we should not have,” Hoekstra said.