LONDON — Keir Starmer will never persuade Donald Trump to love windmills.  But by embracing sweeping reforms of the nuclear power system, the U.K. may finally have found an energy policy the White House likes.  Downing Street on Thursday approved the Fingleton Review, a hefty report calling on the government to speed up building new nuclear power stations by relaxing planning rules, merging regulators, and working more closely with allies itching to invest in the U.K. — including the U.S.  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband touted the report as a “landmark review.” Chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed it would usher in a “new era of global uncertainty.”   But the real winners could be Stateside. “U.S. companies are eager to invest in the U.K., especially in the energy sectors,” Trump’s Ambassador to London Warren Stephens said in a newspaper column late last year.  In the documents approving the Fingleton recommendations, Starmer’s government promised to build on existing deals with the U.S., as well as other countries, “to establish an international regulatory strategy and delivery plan by Autumn 2026.”   That sort of rhetoric gives Downing Street a way to sell itself as open for exactly the sort of U.S. investment Stephens is encouraging, some insiders believe.  “It’s something that No. 10 would probably have its eye on, [given] how much it’s been trumpeting the amount of successful U.S. investment here,” said one senior industry figure familiar with the government’s approach to U.S. nuclear investment, and granted anonymity to speak candidly. They added: “It’s something that No. 10 is very, very keen on,”   ART OF THE DEAL   Starmer’s pursuit of climate-friendly policies consistently threatens to drive a wedge between London and Washington. But the U.K. government used Trump’s state visit last September to announce a series of joint deals to build new nuclear. This includes plans for British Gas owner Centrica and U.S. developer X-Energy to collaborate building 12 nuclear reactors in Hartlepool, north-east England, while Florida-headquartered Holtec has teamed up with EDF and Tritax to develop data centers powered by small modular reactors at an old coal power station in Cottam, in England’s midlands.   Those firms will “ring up the Department of Energy, they’ll ring up [Trump’s Energy Secretary] Chris Wright … and be like: ‘This is good stuff … they put their money where their mouth is,’” said a second senior industry figure, familiar with talks involving U.S. developers and referencing Thursday’s announcement. “You might not hear Trump talk about Hartlepool … but I think you would get some good sounds in the American administration,” they said.   The U.K. government has been wooing Trump on nuclear ever since last summer. “Issues like nuclear cooperation are issues where we can work together with the U.S.,” Miliband said at the time, as an alternative to U.K. policies on fossil fuels and wind turbines, which the president openly derides.  IN HIS SITES Since then, Miliband has been opening up private routes to market for new nuclear, including reforms which relax siting rules so that new nukes, in theory, could be built anywhere in the country.   He has also hinted at selling Oldbury, a plum U.K. site owned by arms-length body Great British Energy Nuclear — with space for up to five small modular reactors, or mini nuclear plants.  Oldbury is “an absolutely prime site” for private firms to sweep in, he told MPs in February. “We have lots of companies from the U.S. working with U.K. companies on these other routes to market,” he said.  Easing planning rules to build nuclear closer to urban centers could open up another site, Heysham in north-west England, to future development. That site is owned by French energy giant EDF but it, too, has been eyed for potential U.S. development.  “If we have clear action, if the government were able to give clarity and certainty on Heysham, it certainly would be a site U.S. investors would look at,” the second industry figure said, citing technical advantages like its proximity to grid connections and local transport access.     WARMING UP WARREN AND WHITEHALL Any such moves could win over Stephens, the ambassador, who jumped on X last year to express his “extreme disappointment” when Miliband’s decision to build mini-nukes in north Wales deprived U.S. nuclear giant Westinghouse of the chance to build a full-size nuclear power plant on the same site.  There are still hurdles to clear, insiders argued, whatever the political intent behind Friday’s decision.  “The tricky thing with the Fingleton Review is not just the political acceptance of it, it’s the officials’ acceptance of it,” feared a third industry figure, citing supposed skepticism about nuclear among British civil servants.   Ministers will have to ensure the plans are not “suffocated by officials,” they said, who could “just be slow, and delay and delay and delay.”   Labour peer and long-standing nuclear advocate Jon Spellar was more optimistic. The bullish response from government to the Fingleton Review showed politicians have “made clear the direction” to Whitehall, and that fears of delay would be “much less of a problem now.”

The National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management (NFEPWM) will be the first institution to implement the ELENA (European Local Energy Assistance) instrument at the national level in Poland. As the leader of green investment financing in Poland, it is launching a new advisory services segment for companies and local governments preparing sustainable investments. On March 3, 2026, in Luxembourg, Ioannis Tsakiris, a vice president at the European Investment Bank, and Dorota Zawadzka-Stepniak, the board president of the NFEPWM, officially acknowledged an agreement for the ELENA National Pilot Program. The project preparation budget is €4.5 million, with €4.05 million provided as grant support from the ELENA facility — a joint EIB and European Commission facility under InvestEU. Pre-investment support will target local government authorities and heating companies. Increased investments in heating and energy efficiency will lead to energy savings and reduced carbon dioxide emissions. These efforts are part of Poland’s energy transition, with the NFEPWM playing a significant role. In 2026, the fund will allocate 85 percent of its planned green investment budget of €8.8 billion to the energy transition. After a consultation, the European Commission formally approved the ELENA grant, and it was decided to leverage the NFEPWM’s experience to implement an ELENA pilot mechanism nationally. The fund will combine its experience with the EIB’s established practices under the ELENA instrument. After the pilot phase, the NFEPWM plans to continue and expand the program to include beneficiaries from other sectors. > In 2026, the fund will allocate 85 percent of its planned green investment > budget of €8.8 billion to the energy transition. “The competence center, established as part of the ELENA project, addresses market needs in investment consulting to support Poland’s energy transition. The ELENA program will provide the NFEPWM with a unique range of services in Europe, combining advisory and financial support for future beneficiaries. This initiative aligns with the fund’s strategy for 2025–2028, which focuses on developing advisory services and creating a competence center within the fund, as well as utilizing modern financial instruments,” explains Zawadzka-Stepniak. ELENA in Poland: pilot project assumptions Between 2026 and 2029, Polish investors planning thermal modernization of public buildings and upgrades in the heating sector will have access to advisory services. Local government authorities and heating companies will receive comprehensive expert support in preparing their investments. The involvement of relevant experts will facilitate the development of high-quality project documentation, leading to effective funding applications in calls for proposals conducted by the NFEPWM. The pilot program will support entities that choose not to modernize public buildings or heating plants due to a lack of know-how. It will target new investors who can evaluate the profitability of potential investments, helping to expand the NFEPWM program’s beneficiaries. Some Polish local authorities and heating companies, constrained by limited finances, avoid the risk of inefficient spending on investment analysis, missing the chance to secure support from European funds or the Modernisation Fund. Under the ELENA project, the NFEPWM will reach out to these investors, providing technical assistance and identifying financing opportunities for future projects. This approach addresses the need for local governments to enhance energy efficiency and the requirements for heating companies to adopt more environmentally friendly heat generation methods. The future beneficiary will gain a partner in the NFEPWM, an expert in preparing technical documentation for co-financing applications and green project funding. Assistance will focus on supporting preparatory processes, including energy audits, feasibility studies, technical documentation, public procurement services and ex-ante analyses. The transformation of district heating is a priority for change in the Polish economy, making it crucial to enhance the efficiency of district heating systems and increase the use of renewable energy from various sources. More than 15 million Poles are daily users of district heating produced by small municipal heating plants typical of the Central European region. Although the networks are extensive, improving their efficiency is often necessary. The challenges include reducing heat production from coal combustion and minimizing unnecessary heat consumption. Companies are increasingly investing in modern technologies that decrease the release of dust and harmful compounds into the atmosphere. The last 20 years have brought significant changes to the Polish heating sector — carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by nearly 20 percent, the production of harmful dust has been reduced by over 90 percent, sulfur dioxide emissions have decreased by almost 90 percent and nitrogen oxides by over 60 percent. > For nearly 37 years, the NFEPWM has led green transformation financing in > Poland, improving the natural environment and quality of life. It has > co-financed environmental protection and water management investments totaling > nearly 160 billion złoty. Modernizing the heating sector and improving the energy efficiency of public buildings will reduce greenhouse gas emissions locally and nationally. The ELENA project in Poland will co-finance at least 65 entities in the heating sector. Energy efficiency projects will lower energy consumption, increase renewable energy use and enhance facility comfort. Long-term investments will reduce local government operating costs, improving air quality and residents’ quality of life. The national pilot aims to support analyses and documentation for at least 80 thermal modernization investments in public buildings. The ELENA instrument is implemented by the European Investment Bank under an agreement with the European Commission. Established in 2009 as part of the Intelligent Energy Europe II program, ELENA provides pre-investment support for sustainable energy, transport and housing. It is an EIB Advisory grant facility, under InvestEU, which supports the preparation of sustainable investments. As of the end of 2025, the ELENA facility has provided €374 million in grants for 206 projects across the European Union, supporting investments of over €12.7 billion. For nearly 37 years, the NFEPWM has led green transformation financing in Poland, improving the natural environment and quality of life. It has co-financed environmental protection and water management investments totaling nearly 160 billion złoty. Thanks to the NFEPWM, green investments worth approximately 340 billion złoty have been implemented in Poland. Under the Ministry of Climate and Environment, NFEPWM supports EU environmental and energy policy objectives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Polish National ELENA Pilot Programme Co-funded by the InvestEU Advisory Hub of the European Union

One of Moscow’s oil and grain export hubs was damaged by Ukrainian drone strikes overnight, local officials said on Sunday. An oil depot, a warehouse and terminals were damaged in the attack on the Black Sea port of Taman, close to the Crimean peninsula, according to the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region. The port is a key export facility for Russian fossil fuel products, as well as grain and fertilizers. Veniamin Kondratyev posted on Telegram early Sunday that firefighters were tackling blazes at the port and that Kyiv’s “massive attack” also damaged two villages in the region, injuring two people. Ukrainian authorities did not comment on the attack by midday Sunday, but Kyiv acknowledged targeting the Taman port’s oil export facilities earlier this year. With Russia’s fossil-fuel earnings funding its war on Ukraine, Kyiv views oil export sites as key targets. After Moscow intensified its attacks on Ukrainian power infrastructure last year, the two sides briefly halted energy-related strikes as part of a U.S.-brokered moratorium in late January. The pause, however, was short-lived. The strike on the Taman port came one week after Russia launched a major attack on Ukrainian energy facilities, compounding the situation for the country’s battered power sector. Russian strikes have left households in Kyiv without power and heating amid freezing temperatures. On Friday, the United Nations’ monitoring mission in Ukraine condemned Russia’s repeated attacks on Kyiv’s energy infrastructure as showing “a grave disregard for the lives and well-being of civilians.”

Europe is laying the foundation for renewed economic growth. Regulatory simplification is gaining traction. Public investment is accelerating in technology, energy and defense. Private capital is supplementing these efforts. These are meaningful steps, which, in the eyes of many, are long overdue and still need to gain pace. But an additional ingredient is required.  Our new research finds that closing the continent’s competitiveness gap requires Europe’s major companies to place a new emphasis on entrepreneurial courage: that is, the increased willingness to embrace uncertainty and take calculated risks in service of renewal and growth. Corporate leaders willing to make bold investments and engage in modern public-private collaborations, much like their American and Asian peers, stand to reap the rewards for acting decisively and with greater urgency.   Europe’s global competitiveness is ultimately a function of individual companies making a material difference, particularly large corporations and dynamic scale-ups. And it doesn’t require many acting boldly to have a disproportionate impact. In examining a sample representing about 15 percent of the U.S. economy, the McKinsey Global Institute found that more than two-thirds of productivity growth between 2011 and 2019 was driven by just 44 ‘standout’ companies. Meanwhile, 13 standout companies drove a similar proportion of the German sample’s productivity growth during the same period. These highly valued ‘outliers’, together with differences in growth and return on invested capital, underpin much of the valuation gap between European companies and their international peers, as highlighted in research we conducted on UK capital markets.   The status quo is not tenable.  Since the global financial crisis, Europe has endured a prolonged slump in private investment that has been especially pronounced in future-shaping industries. In the past five years alone, our analysis found that companies with headquarters in the United States have invested €2 trillion more in digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) than their European peers. And in traditional manufacturing industries, China is out-investing Europe at a rate of 3:1.  > This investment gap not only stifles European economic growth, but prevents > the continent from inventing, developing and deploying the technologies it > needs to increase productivity and drive prosperity.  And the need to boost investments is growing: when the landmark Draghi report on European competitiveness was released in 2024, it estimated that an additional €800 billion needed to be mobilized annually to start closing the continent’s competitiveness gap. With the required additional investment in defense, that figure is now estimated to be €1.2 trillion annually for the next five years.  Of course, the regulatory landscape is also important. The positive news over the past year is that the European Commission has implemented dozens of initiatives, from regulatory simplification to streamlining and enhancing funding and market-creation mechanisms, as well as preparing to propose a ‘28th regime’ to make it easier for companies to scale across its 27 member states. Governments are also stepping up, with growth in strategic public investment in technology, energy and defense capabilities creating tailwinds for private investment. For instance, Germany amended its constitution to exempt defense spending above 1 percent of GDP from its debt brake and established a €500 billion fund to support infrastructure and climate-neutral investment. Similar programs are taking shape in France, Italy, the Netherlands and the Nordics.  But, while private sector activity shows some signs of acceleration, more is needed. Driving Europe’s economic vitality requires the emergence of standout companies, acting both individually and in close collaboration with the public sector. Without it, Europe risks another decade of ‘secular stagnation’: sluggish real GDP growth of around 1 percent annually as excess savings and a dearth of investment depress aggregate demand and push interest rates back to near zero.  > So, what does it take to show more entrepreneurial courage? Informed by our > global research and what we see standout firms doing, our research highlights > a range of actions leaders could explore.  One example is making broader ecosystem plays, such as semiconductor company ASML joining with the Dutch government and regional partners to launch Project Beethoven, a €2.5 billion public-private investment to ensure ASML’s continued presence and expansion of the broader microchip cluster in Eindhoven. Another is re-inventing potential stranded assets to position them for the industries of the future, illustrated by the range of European utilities converting or marketing former coal and gas power plant sites for hyperscale data centers. And a clear one is radical adoption of AI and automation technologies, which MGI’s research shows could add up to 3.4 percentage points to annual productivity growth globally through 2040.  > Europe has an opportunity to take steps to decisively alter its competitive > trajectory.  But while public sector leaders can lay the foundations necessary to accelerate investment and growth, the continent’s leading companies are distinctly positioned to amplify this and make a critical contribution to the continent’s prosperity, security and strategic autonomy. There’s growing consensus on what needs to be done. What’s now needed is a hefty dose of entrepreneurial courage to act.

KYIV — The Russian army attacked Ukraine with more than 90 killer drones in the early hours of Thursday morning, causing complete blackouts in the key industrial regions of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv’s energy ministry reported. “While energy workers managed to restore power in the Zaporizhzhia region in the morning, some 800,000 households in the nearby Dnipro region were still without electricity and heating on Thursday morning,” Artem Nekrasov, acting energy minister of Ukraine, said during a morning briefing. In Dnipro, eight coal mines stopped working because of a power outage. All the miners were safely evacuated to the surface, Nekrasov added. Power outages were also reported in Chernihiv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava and other regions. Freezing weather is coming to Ukraine over the next three days, with temperatures forecast to drop to minus 20° C during the night, when Russia often launches massive missile and drone attacks. Precipitation and cold could cause additional electricity supply disruptions due to snow accumulating on power lines, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Wednesday evening. “Ukraine’s energy system is under enemy attack every day, and energy workers work in extremely difficult conditions to provide people with light and heat. Deteriorating weather conditions create additional stress on critical infrastructure. We are working to minimize the consequences of bad weather,” Svyrydenko added. Local governors in the eastern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro reported that hospitals and other critical infrastructure had to turn to emergency power supplies because of the latest Russian attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainian energy workers for the speedy power restoration in Zaporizhzhia, and used the opportunity to remind Kyiv’s partners around the world they need to respond “to this deliberate torment of the Ukrainian people by Russia.” “There is absolutely no military rationale in such strikes on the energy sector and infrastructure that leave people without electricity and heating in wintertime. This is Russia’s war specifically against our people, against life in Ukraine — an attempt to break Ukraine,” Zelenskyy added.

BELÉM, Brazil — The European Union is preparing to veto the final deal at this year’s climate summit if countries do not agree to stronger efforts to cut planet-warming emissions, according to four European diplomats. The negotiators said the 27 countries were united in their anger at the draft deal that the COP 30 talks’ Brazilian presidency offered Friday morning, saying it had crossed the bloc’s red lines on financing and did not reflect their push for countries to do more to slash pollution. The European Commission took the unusual step of publishing a short speech that climate chief Wopke Hoekstra gave in a closed-door meeting at noon local time Friday. The current draft deal contains “no science… no transitioning away [from fossil fuels]… But instead, weakness,” Hoekstra said. “Under no circumstances are we going to accept this… You can count on us to do our absolute utmost to deliver. Not for the EU. But for all of us.” At a coordination meeting this morning, EU ministers were asked to secure support from their governments to block the final agreement if no changes are made, the four diplomats said. “We’ve told ourselves in the past that we should have the balls to walk out if the text is not strong enough. But until today I’ve not heard us say it this loudly and as part of an actual strategy,” one of the diplomats said. The diplomat, like others in this article, was granted anonymity in order to discuss the private meetings. The divisions set up a possibility that countries could walk away from these talks without a final outcome. The Brazilian president of this year’s COP30 talks, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, pleaded in an opening speech for countries to come together and show their support for the 2015 Paris Agreement, especially after the United States walked out of the deal and refused to send delegates to the conference in Brazil. “This cannot be an agenda that divides us,” Corrêa do Lago said. “But at the same time that we have to face the fact that the largest economy in the world has left the Paris accord, we have to remember that we all stay in because we all believe in it. We cannot be divided inside the Paris accord.” But a second European diplomat said that, in the absence of the U.S., a group of emerging economies including China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, known as the BRICS, had seized the initiative to stamp down on efforts to cut emissions. “This is a BRICS COP,” the diplomat said. “They’re circling around now a text which is designed for them and they’re all now saying it’s a take-it-or-leave-it text.” Alden Meyer, a long-time COP watcher and senior associate at climate think tank E3G, said: “There’s definitely a possibility this could fall apart.” A proposed roadmap for tracking and marking national progress in transitioning off fossil fuels, backed by more than 80 countries including most of Europe, did not appear in the text. It has become one of the key asks for governments trying to enhance global progress for ditching fossil fuels that are heating the planet. But a clutch of oil-, gas- and coal-producing countries has resisted the effort, which has become the most divisive issue at the negotiations. “We can only talk about things that are in the text,” Maesela Kekana, South Africa’s lead negotiator, said in an interview. “Why are you talking about something that does not exist?” The text largely accounts for where the world is with respect to hitting national climate goals and a challenging geopolitical situation, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at think tank Asia Society. He said that includes U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats on trade and an EU bloc whose nations are responding to domestic calls to restore industrial competitiveness. “I see the current text as actually a pretty accurate reflection of that situation,” he said, describing “the lack of ambition and the fact that many countries are having a hard time on their domestic climate push.” But for the EU and many vulnerable countries, it’s essential to leave Belém with a strategy to address the enormous gap between the world’s collective emissions-cutting efforts and the Paris Agreement targets to curb global warming. “We cannot negotiate with a text that does not include a mention of fossil fuels, a mention of a roadmap to end deforestation. We cannot take as good faith a text that fails to set a global goal on adaptation finance,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s lead negotiator. “It is simply so weak that it’s offensive.” The European countries were also preparing to cross their own red lines on proposals to funnel more money toward developing countries’ efforts to prepare for climate disasters. The draft text includes a commitment to triple the finance now flowing to poorer countries to help them cope with the ravages of climate change, known as adaptation finance, by 2030. That’s an unacceptable timeline, said the second European diplomat. But indicated that 2035 might be acceptable. It “goes well beyond the red lines of what most of us came in with,” said the diplomat. “The trebling is more than most donors can do, but we’re kind of over a barrel.” If the EU gets more on climate action, Hoekstra said in his speech published online, “yes you can ask the EU to move beyond its comfort zone on the financing of adaptation.”

BELÉM, Brazil — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday that the fight against climate change was not against the fuels that cause it — only the pollution they emit. “We are not fighting fossil fuels, we are fighting the emissions from fossil fuels,” said von der Leyen at a press conference at the G20 in South Africa. The comment could undermine the EU position, just as European ministers were set to make a stand for a “roadmap” to move away from coal, oil and gas at the COP30 climate talks, taking place on the other side of the Atlantic in Brazil. A draft deal, suggested by the Brazilian presidency, contained no reference to past deals to move away from fossil fuels, nor did it have the roadmap pushed for by many EU countries, though notably not the EU itself. Overnight, 14 EU member states joined 22 other countries, many of them highly vulnerable to climate impacts, threatening to collapse the talks over the absence of fossil fuels from the deal. “We cannot support an outcome that does not include a roadmap for implementing a just, orderly, and equitable transition away from fossil fuels,” said a letter from those countries to the Brazilian organizers, seen by POLITICO. Von der Leyen emphasized Friday that the EU was not resiling from its legal climate goals. “We are staying the course,” she said. “We’re very clear that we want to reach those targets. We are well on track for the 2030 target. On the way forward we have to be adaptable and flexible. because thsi is a huge transition taht is happening. No one has done this before. So we really are in uncharted waters.” Asked about von der Leyen’s comments just as he was walking into a United Nations plenary, EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said: “The problem is caused by emissions, and the reality is that the dirtier the fossil fuel, the more damage they are doing.” That, he added, was why the EU was calling for greater efforts to cut planet-warming emissions at COP30. Danish Climate Minister Lars Aagaard, walking beside Hoekstra, said: “Emissions are a consequence of fossil fuels, so I find it a bit hard to see the distinction. What we need to see here is to have the emissions down. That’s what we are aiming for, that’s what we came for.” European lawmakers on the ground in Belém were more critical of von der Leyen’s words. “I believe she’s trying to be diplomatic, but one thing is very clear: We need to exit fossil fuels to lower our emissions,” said Lena Schilling, an MEP from the Greens. “Europe is fighting to increase ambition” on reducing emissions at COP30, “and that’s the goal I think von der Leyen should stand behind, like every member state,” said Mohammed Chahim, vice president of the center-left Socialists & Democrats in the European Parliament. Emissions, he added, “are fully connected to fossil fuels, so I think Europe should support the call of phasing out fossil fuels.” Noting that the focus on tackling emissions rather than their source often implies extensive use of carbon capture technology (CCS), which is as yet unavailable at scale, he referred to something Hoekstra said repeatedly at last year’s climate summit: “Like a very smart commissioner said at the previous COP, you cannot CCS yourself out of everything.”

BELÉM, Brazil — Turkey will host next year’s U.N. climate conference after Australia’s bid imploded. Turkey and Australia had faced off for more than a year over the talks’ location, an impasse that extended almost until the final day of the current climate summit in Belém, Brazil. If no resolution had emerged, next year’s summit would have defaulted to Germany, which has said it wouldn’t have time to plan the event properly. While Turkey will provide the venue for the 2026 talks, Australia will hold the presidency — and therefore the diplomacy, said Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate change and energy. That means that “I would have all the powers of the COP presidency,” he said. A Turkish official, who did not give his name, said the final deal would be announced on Thursday. Turkey had proposed hosting the talks in the Mediterranean city of Antalya. It is a highly unusual arrangement for the annual climate conference, which normally has a single host and presidency. But it’s not unprecedented: In 2017, Germany hosted a Fijian-led conference. “Obviously it would be great if Australia could have it all. But we can’t have it all,” Bowen said. “It’s also a significant concession for Turkey.” He added that before the summit, separate talks will occur in the Pacific where money would be raised to help that region cope with climate change. German State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth, whose country chairs the Western Europe and Others Group from which the host of next year’s talks is due to be selected based on the rotating system of the U.N., put a positive spin on the discussions. “There was a positive spirit,” he said. “It’s something extraordinary that two countries from very different sides of the planet but being in one group reached an agreement.” But others were more candid. “It’s an ugly solution,” said a European diplomat who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential discussions. “Turkey just wants to showboat and don’t care about content really, and Aussies do but they don’t control the event and logistics.” The new host country’s climate track record is mixed. Turkey aims to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2053, a date chosen more for its symbolism — 600 years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople — than science. This year, it presented a new climate target that will see its emissions increase by around 16 percent until 2035. The country overtook Poland last year as Europe’s top coal user, and harbors ambitions of stepping up gas exploration to become a regional transit hub. Australia had secured the backing of the U.K. and some European countries, as well as the Pacific region, with which it planned to co-host the summit. But during a series of long meetings on Wednesday, Australia failed to persuade Turkey to back down. Australia had been favored to host the talks in the city of Adelaide. But on Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese blinked, saying his country would not block Turkey as host country if Ankara were to prevail. His office later clarified the statement to indicate he meant that he expected Turkey to do the same if Australia won the competition. But by then, news stories had circulated around the world that Australia had backed down.

BERLIN — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lashed out at Friedrich Merz after Germany’s chancellor made remarks disparaging the South American country. Merz said last week that he and the national press corps had been happy to return to Germany from the Amazon city of Belém, Brazil, where they had attended this year’s U.N. climate talks. “He should have gone dancing in Pará,” Lula said about the state where Belém is situated. “He should have tasted Pará’s cuisine. Because he would have realized that Berlin doesn’t offer him 10 percent of the quality that the state of Pará offers.” At a trade conference in Berlin last week, Merz attempted to spread optimism about the struggling German economy — but put his foot in his mouth. “We live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Last week I asked some journalists who were with me in Brazil: Which of you would like to stay here? No one raised their hand,” Merz said upon returning from Brazil. “They were all happy that, above all, we returned from this place to Germany.” His comments sparked a backlash among Brazilian state politicians — and, according to a Spiegel report, might even jeopardize the efforts of the German delegation on the ground. “Pará opened its doors and showed the strength of a welcoming people. It is curious to see that those who contributed to global warming find the heat of the Amazon strange,” Helder Barbalho, the Pará state governor, wrote on X. Although Merz has repeatedly stressed that he wants to maintain an ambitious climate agenda and existing climate targets, his government has also relaxed the timeline for a phaseout of coal plants and is planning to construct new gas-fired power plants.

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.