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Climate change and pollution threaten Europe's resources, EU warns

Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic security, the EU's environmental agency said on Monday.

Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic security, the EU's environmental agency said on Monday.

Climate
Resources

Turkey argues both countries can win from drawn-out contest with Australia over Cop31 hosting rights

Exclusive: Turkey’s climate minister says country is working on ‘innovative solutions’ as Labor privately downplays expectations impasse can be brokenSign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter hereTurkey says it is pursuing “innovative solutions” in the race with Australia to host the Cop31 UN climate talks, arguing both countries can win from drawn-out negotiations over next year’s summit.After talks with the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York last week, Turkey’s climate minister, Murat Kurum, said he was optimistic about a resolution.Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as a free newsletter Continue reading...

Turkey says it is pursuing “innovative solutions” in the race with Australia to host the Cop31 UN climate talks, arguing both countries can win from drawn-out negotiations over next year’s summit.After talks with the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York last week, Turkey’s climate minister, Murat Kurum, said he was optimistic about a resolution.Azerbaijan’s Cop29 president, Mukhtar Babayev, has helped moderate some of the discussions.“We respect Australia’s candidacy,” Kurum told Guardian Australia.“Since 2023, we have been examining options with my esteemed counterpart and friend, Chris Bowen, and our teams.“We believe that we can achieve a success based on historical ties where both countries win. With the support of the UN Climate Secretariat, we are working on innovative solutions in the procedures.”The Albanese government has privately downplayed expectations Australia will win the bid due to Turkey’s desire to stay in the race. If neither party withdraws before Cop30 ends in November, hosting rights automatically revert to Bonn in Germany.It is unclear how the impasse will be resolved, or what the new solutions could be.In 2019, then UK prime minister Boris Johnson used a package of incentives to convince Turkey to pull out of the bidding contest for Cop26, including promising to back its candidates in other international events and to push countries on reclassifying Turkey under the UN convention for climate aid.Johnson also reportedly agreed to support Turkey’s bid to host Cop31. Keir Starmer’s Labour government has since publicly backed Australia’s bid.Anthony Albanese’s efforts to meet the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in New York failed, and the government has ruled out using taxpayer funds to effectively buy off the opposition.Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdoğan, is considered a key player in her country’s bid. A longtime environmental campaigner, she is reportedly eager for Turkey to host the summit in Antalya, the resort city where world leaders met for the 2015 G20 summit.Australia wants delegates to meet in Adelaide, in a partnership with Pacific Island nations.Kurum said Turkey planned to officially submit its nationally determined contribution to carbon emission reductions and “successfully complete consultations for Cop31” before this year’s summit in Belém, Brazil.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Clear Air AustraliaAdam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisisPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“We are ready to demonstrate real, participatory, fair, and effective leadership in the fight against the climate crisis,” he said.Kurum said Turkey had a very strong vision for hosting in 2026.“Our goal is to create a bridge that strengthens climate action and leaves no one behind.“We are aiming for a global Cop presidency, not just a regional one. We believe that hosting the Cop presidency in our country would also be an opportunity for the world.”Bowen said the Albanese government respected Turkey’s desire to host the event.“While there is strong support for Australia and the Pacific’s bid, the process requires consensus, and so we remain in discussions with Türkiye towards a mutually acceptable outcome, in consultation with our Pacific family,” he said.Bowen and Albanese have declined to discuss the status of negotiations with Turkey in recent weeks, other than to say they remained a work in progress. Both describe Australia’s support among partner countries as overwhelming. Australia has at least 23 votes among the critical 28-country Western European and Others group whose turn it is to host the summit.Guardian Australia revealed last week Bowen had appeared with Emine Erdoğan at a major environment event. She hosted dignitaries at the Zero Waste Blue exhibition on New York’s upper east side.

Climate
Energy
Government

Incredible Journeys: Migratory Sharks on the Move

Even as scientists rush to identify the migratory paths of some endangered shark species to help better protect them, climate change and other threats shift this behavior, adding urgency to the research. The post Incredible Journeys: Migratory Sharks on the Move appeared first on The Revelator.

Migration: Many animal species do it — from tiny zooplankton to enormous whales —   moving over every continent and through all oceans, from north to south, south to north, Europe to Asia, and Asia to Africa. This movement by individual animals in response to season or life stage typically involves substantial numbers and vast distances. Recent studies give scientists a better understanding of migrations at the species and population levels and reveal implications for conservation. This series focuses on a few particular species, what we’re learning about their migrations, and how that knowledge may help us protect them. We start with a group of species many people may not realize migrate: sharks. In April 2025 researchers tagged a 7-foot male scalloped hammerhead shark they dubbed Webbkinfield off Port Aransas, Texas. Over the next four months, the scientists watched, fascinated, as Webbkinfield pinballed around just off the continental shelf. He didn’t wander far on the map but swam almost 2,000 miles. Less of a homebody, a male shortfin mako named Pico was tagged in March 2018 off the Texas coast and traveled more than 21,000 miles by August 2020. His journeys took him up to Massachusetts and back. Twice. Scientists are learning that some sharks get around more — a lot more — than others. A silky shark tagged June 18, 2021, in the Galápagos Marine Reserve had swum more than 1,000 miles west into the open ocean by Sept. 20; another tagged that February traveled more than 8,000 miles into the big blue and back. Others milled around the reserve, with a few making short forays to the Central or South American coast. Silky shark satellite tagging in the Galapagos. Photo: Pelayo Salinas, used with permission. This research on when and where marine animals move is critical to efforts to protect them, says Yannis Papastamatiou, an associate professor in Florida International University’s Institute of Environment. “Conservation is expensive, so we need to know when, where, and how to apply actions,” he says. Papastamatiou is one of the more than 350 contributing authors of a recent study in the journal Science that aims to tackle part of that challenge. The study examined data on migration patterns of more than 100 large-bodied marine vertebrate species, including several sharks. One of the study’s biggest revelations: On average, data showed, the tracked animals spent just 13% of their time inside existing marine protected areas. That suggests a pressing need to protect more ocean habitats and figure out the best areas to protect. Some efforts along these lines are already underway. For example, in 2022 the nations that are parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which set a goal to protect, conserve, and manage at least 30% of the world’s oceans. But Papastamatiou stresses that it needs to be the right 30%. “A lot of these animals move over very large areas, and it is not feasible to protect all of those.” Research on three shark species help illustrate the challenges ahead, as well as what we still need to understand about shark migration. Shortfin Mako Mako shark populations have plummeted due to commercial and recreational fishing, which is they they’re listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade on Endangered Species, which puts limits on their commercial exploitation. Makos are an apex predator found in tropical and temperate waters around the world, but until recently little was known about their movements and, therefore, where to protect them. But earlier this year, a genetic study identified two distinct mako populations in the North and South Atlantic, according to co-author Mahmood Shivji of the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center at Nova Southeastern University, Florida. Females appear to stick to their respective populations, but males contribute genetically to both, which means they move between them. Such intermixing helps maintain genetic diversity, Shivji points out, giving the species a better chance to adapt to environmental changes. This new information builds on a 2021 tagging study by the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi (which included Pico) that showed makos spend more time in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico than expected. Another found that some stay in the Gulf year-round. “We thought makos were seasonal in the Gulf from looking at catch data,” said Kesley Banks, an associate research scientist at the institute and an author on both papers. “We assumed they left in the summer and that isn’t the case. With both these studies, we see that they stay in the Gulf all year.” Not all of them, though. In addition to Pico’s summer sojourns up the Atlantic coast, another male traveled thousands of miles to and around the Caribbean. Mako sharks tagged in the Atlantic by Shivji and his colleagues have not been tracked to the western Gulf, though, according to Banks. These findings highlight how much movement patterns vary even within a species and make it clear that highly migratory animals must be managed at a large scale, not just on the local level. Those two meandering makos from the Gulf, for example, passed through at least 12 jurisdictional boundaries, representing different levels of fishing pressure and a variety of regulations. Scalloped Hammerheads Critically endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks are another highly migratory species experiencing intense overfishing and rapidly diminishing numbers. Every year hundreds of these hammerheads, mostly females, gather around protected areas near the Galápagos Islands. It isn’t clear where they migrate from, though, or whether the same individuals return every year. To find out, the Florida Shark Research Center spent five years conducting biopsies collected from the aggregation. They’re currently analyzing the samples, with plans to publish results in mid-2026. Researcher about to deploy a satellite tag on a scalloped hammerhead. Photo: Mark Wong, used with permission. But we already know a few things about their behavior. “The sharks aggregate during daytime and disappear at night,” probably to feed, says Shivji, who is leading the study. The researchers suspect many of the females are pregnant based on their size, and tracks show some moving from the aggregation to recently discovered nursery areas near the mainland. Others have gone westward far into the Pacific, although their tags didn’t last long enough to show whether those individuals turned around and came back. This study could help make the case that the paths the sharks travel between existing protected areas also need protection. “Their migrations to the aggregation area put them at risk,” Shivji says. Silky Sharks Considered “vulnerable to extinction” by the IUCN, silky sharks get their name from the sheen created by densely packed dermal denticles — the tooth-like structures that make up shark skin. Once one of the most abundant shark species, they are heavily fished for their fins. Silky sharks aggregate around Cocos Island in Costa Rica and the Galápagos Marine Reserve. Individuals tagged there by Shivji’s team mostly remained close by, not venturing far outside the Reserve. But some were tracked far into unprotected international waters, with the data indicating they faced fishing pressure on as much as 50% of their journeys. Shivji and colleagues also have tagged silky sharks in Revillagigedo National Park, part of a network of protected areas in Mexico’s Eastern Tropical Pacific (and a UNESCO World Heritage Center). Those, too, traveled well outside the protected area, with two known to have been captured. One question answered by this work could be whether the Galápagos and Mexico populations mix and if so, whether their travel routes that can be protected. More to Learn Researchers have learned a lot about shark migrations in the past few decades thanks in part to improved and more commonplace tools. Tags are more advanced, for example, providing near real-time tracking via satellites for longer periods of time thanks to protective paint and better batteries. Even so, findings have only scratched the surface. The movements of many species remain a mystery, as does the variation in migration behaviors within a species. “People like to describe migration as a population-level reaction, where everybody leaves at same time, all go here, and all come back at the same time,” Papastamatiou says. “But we have started to see it is a proportion of animals that perform a migration, with a mix of animals that migrate or are residential. It is important to ask what determines who migrates and who remains? There has to be some selective reason for it.” Studies have shown sex differences in migratory patterns of some shark species, such as females seeming more likely to migrate than males and pregnant females more likely to migrate than nonpregnant ones. A Moving Target Even as scientists are learning shark migration patterns, those patterns may be changing. Another paper on which Shivji is a co-author found mako migrations responding to increasing water temperatures and the decreased dissolved oxygen content that results. Because makos have the highest metabolic rate of any shark, low oxygen levels effectively restrict their range. “People focus on water temperature with climate change, but dissolved oxygen should be as big a concern,” Shivji said. Other research has concluded that elevated sea-surface temperatures could cause sharks to delay their departure for summer habitats. That may already be happening; from 2011 to 2021, researchers at Florida Atlantic University saw blacktip shark populations off the state’s coast decrease to one-tenth of their initial abundance. “In 2011 it was common to see over 10,000 sharks on a single aerial survey flight along Palm Beach County,” FAU professor Stephen Kajiura wrote in an email. “By 2021, we barely saw 1,000, despite increasing the number of flights in later years. The sharks were shifting northward. During that time, the average winter water temperature had increased by 1 degree C. That is a dramatic shift in just a decade.” Such changes in the behavior of major predators have wide-ranging effects on local ecosystems. For example, fewer sharks preying on groupers and snappers could increase their numbers, and those fish would eat more of the smaller fish. Reducing the number of smaller fish could increase that of other creatures down the food web, in turn causing changes to their prey. Down at the bottom of the chain, a decline in species that eat blue-green algae could increase toxic algae blooms. In addition to protected areas, mitigation strategies also must account for changes in movement patterns. For example, a shift in timing of the arrival of a species to an aggregation could necessitate altering existing fishing limits. Enforcement is also key — and already inadequate. “Law enforcement is stretched out. We need more funding and more people,” said Banks. “But we also need the research to know where to send people, to narrow down where enforcement should be.” Toward that goal, she and other scientists plan to continue tagging sharks. “I’m waiting on tags in the mail right now,” Banks says. “Shark science is in its infancy, we are just now learning where they’re going and making new discoveries.” “There are still species that we don’t know much about,” Papastamatiou says. “And even those we do know about, we can’t stop studying them because they can change.” Previously in The Revelator: Trump vs. Birds: Proposed Budget Eliminates Critical Research Programs The post Incredible Journeys: Migratory Sharks on the Move appeared first on The Revelator.

Climate
Animals
Extinction

Some Air Travelers Bothered by Their Flight's Emissions Turn to Carbon Offsets. Do They Work?

Air travel results in a lot of planet-warming emissions, but it's also sometimes necessary

So you're booking your flight, and just when you're about to check out, the airline asks if you'd like to pay a little something to offset your share of the flight's pollution. Or, maybe you're an environmentally minded person, and you've heard you can buy these things called carbon offsets.Are they worth it? Let's explore. Why planes are so pollutive Jet engines burn fossil fuels, releasing planet-warming gases into the atmosphere. They also release water vapor, which turns into long, thin clouds called contrails that trap heat instead of letting it escape to space — additional warming that isn't typically included in a flight's emissions, said Diane Vitry, aviation director at a clean energy advocacy organization called the European Federation for Transport and Environment.Reducing emissions from air travel is difficult. Batteries weigh too much and provide too little power for long flights. Sustainable aviation fuel — biofuels made from things like corn, oil seeds and algae that can be mixed with jet fuel — is currently more expensive than traditional fuel and lacking sufficient supply to be in wide use.“Aviation is the problem child,” Vitry said. “Aviation and shipping are not decarbonizing, and definitely not fast enough.”That's where carbon offsets come in.A carbon offset is a certificate or a permit to emit planet-warming gases. It's connected to something that stores or reduces carbon emissions — for example, planting trees, or funding renewable energy.The idea is that the program or action offsets your pollutive action. You drive a car that pollutes a certain amount, you buy a carbon offset that leads to the planting of a tree that sequesters the same amount, and bam: the pollutive action (driving) is offset (tree planting).They've gotten popular enough that there's an entire marketplace that connects people and companies wanting to reduce their impacts with other companies that promise to do so.Vitry doesn't think so. She calls them a fake climate solution.“Unfortunately, it is not what is going to solve aviation’s climate problem,” she said. “You can’t clear your climate conscience with an offset.”Sure, you can plant a tree, but Vitry said that doesn’t stop your flight's emissions from entering the atmosphere. The tree may eventually absorb an equivalent amount of emissions. Or it may die. Or it may be sold as an offset multiple times by an unscrupulous company, meaning the tree can't possible absorb all the emissions it's supposed to.Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, has studied carbon offsets for more than 20 years. She said some offset schemes are overcounted by 10 to 13 times their actual value.“There’s so much over-crediting on the offset market, so many credits that either don’t represent any emissions reductions at all or represent just a small fraction of what they claim,” Haya said.She said that’s partly because the voluntary offset market is largely unregulated, and it’s really difficult to measure offsets. The other problem is everyone involved benefits from over-exaggerating the benefits of offsets. “The buyer of the credit wants the cheap credits, the seller of the credits wants to get more credits for the same activity and the third party verifier is hired by the project developer, so has a conflict of interest to be lenient,” Haya said.Jodi Manning, chief executive of the carbon offset nonprofit Cool Effect, said consumers should beware of offset programs that don't say clearly which project will benefit from your purchase or how much of your money is going to a project. But she said “high-quality” carbon credits can play an important role where emissions are unavoidable.Manning said offsets have to be permanent, transparent, and unable to exist without the offset funding. “When carbon is done correctly, it can provide a credible, immediate way to account for the emissions that travelers cannot otherwise reduce. We all create emissions at some point and it is certainly better to take action to compensate for it than to do nothing,” she said.Several airlines that offer offsets did not respond to requests from AP to talk about their use. One that did, Southwest Airlines, said in a statement that it does not plan to rely on carbon offsets to help it reach a goal of net zero emissions by 2050. What are you some other options for offsetting your air travel? Fly less, take the train if you can, and pack light, Manning said.Instead of buying carbon offsets, Haya said she donates $1,000 to an organization she cares about on the rare occasion she flies for work or family visits. "We have an ethical obligation not to fly unless we really have to," she said.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Energy
Pollution

A.I. Is on the Rise, and So Is the Environmental Impact of the Data Centers That Drive It

The demand for data centers is growing faster than our ability to mitigate their skyrocketing economic and environmental costs

A.I. Is on the Rise, and So Is the Environmental Impact of the Data Centers That Drive It The demand for data centers is growing faster than our ability to mitigate their skyrocketing economic and environmental costs Amber X. Chen - AAAS Mass Media Fellow September 29, 2025 8:00 a.m. Amazon data centers sit next to houses in Loudoun County. Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post via Getty Images Key takeaways: A.I. and data centers As the demand for A.I. increases, companies are building more data centers to handle a growing workload. Many of these data centers are more than 30,000 square feet in size and use a lot of power and water. Gregory Pirio says he never would have moved to his townhome in Northern Virginia’s Loudoun County had he known that the area would soon be at the epicenter of a data center boom. Pirio—who works as the director of the Extractive Industry and Human Development Center at the Institute of World Affairs—moved to the county, just about an hour’s drive outside of Washington, D.C. 14 years ago. Back then, he recalls the place being filled with forested areas and farmland, with the occasional sounds of planes flying in from Dulles. “It was just really beautiful, and now it has this very industrial feel across it,” he says, adding that one can now drive for miles and just see data centers. Data centers are buildings that house the infrastructure needed to run computers, including servers, network equipment and data storage drives. Though they’ve been around since 1945 with the invention of the first general-purpose digital computer, in the past few years there has been an explosion in data center development to match the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Over the past year, the environmental consequences of A.I.—specifically its most popular generative platforms like ChatGPT—have been under intense scrutiny. Last July, NPR reported that each ChatGPT search uses ten times more electricity than a Google search. In March 2024, Forbes reported that the water consumption associated with a single conversation with ChatGPT was comparable to that of a standard plastic water bottle. The emissions of data centers are only projected to go up, especially as companies look to employ A.I. on users’ behalf. For example, in May, Google announced A.I. overviews, a new user enhancement strategy that uses A.I. to create succinct summaries based on websites associated with a Google search query. Those queries and others like it on different platforms increase the need for additional data centers, which will require more and more energy. What are data centers? Data centers come in a variety of sizes. According to a 2024 report by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they can range from smaller centers—integrated into larger buildings for internal use by companies—that are on average less than 150 square feet, to hyperscale centers which are operated off-site by large tech companies to facilitate large-scale internet services. On average, hyperscale data centers are 30,000 square feet, although the largest of these data centers can reach sizes of well over one million square feet. As of 2024, more than half of the world’s hyperscale data centers were owned by tech giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Large data centers, particularly hyperscalers, are the data center of choice for companies looking to operate A.I. platforms, due to their high computing power. Clusters of large data centers are strategically chosen based on proximity to clients, electricity costs and available infrastructure. For example, data centers have been running through Northern Virginia since the advent of the internet in the mid-1990s because of the area’s cheap energy, a favorable regulatory system and proximity to Washington. Northern Virginia holds the highest concentration of data centers in the world at over 250 facilities. Across the state, data centers are now near schools, residential neighborhoods and retirement communities. According to Ann Bennett, data center issues chair at the Sierra Club’s Virginia Chapter, new data centers that have been popping up across the area are of an entirely different scale and era. “These are bigger, taller,” Bennett says. “They’re pretty much only building hyperscalers.” How do data centers consume energy? To power the digital world—from day-to-day digital communications, websites and data storage—data centers require energy to power the hundreds of servers within them. With the advent of more hyperscale data centers being built to support A.I., data center energy use has increased. Benjamin Lee, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, breaks the high energy consumption of A.I. into two categories. First, there is the training that A.I. models undergo, in which tens of thousands of graphics processing units, or GPUs, within a data center must consume large datasets to train the parameters of more powerful A.I. models. Second, once an A.I. model is trained, it performs inference—or the process of responding to user requests based on its training. According to Lee, every word that a user provides to an A.I. model is processed to figure out not only what the word means but the extent to which that word relates to all other words that have been fed into the model. Thus, as more words increase processing time, more energy is consumed. “Fundamentally, A.I. uses energy, and it doesn’t care where that energy is coming from,” Lee says. Data centers mostly get their energy from whatever local grid is available to them. Globally, because most electric grids still rely heavily on fossil fuels, A.I. increases greenhouse gas emissions, says Shaolei Ren, a computer engineer at the University of California, Riverside. Virginia, for example, is part of PJM grid, for which the primary fuel source is natural gas. According to Noman Bashir, a computer engineer at MIT, because data centers are huge power consumers they often disrupt electric grid infrastructure, which can decrease the lifespan of household appliances, for example. In addition, Bashir notes that grid infrastructure must be updated when each new data center comes in—a cost that residents are subsidizing. In a 2025 report, the Dominion Energy found that that residential electric bills are projected to more than double by 2039, primarily due to data center growth. Already, the technology industry has seen a growth in emissions, mostly fueled by data centers. In July, Amazon reported that its emissions rose from 64.38 million metric tons in 2023 to 68.25 million metric tons in 2024—the company’s first emissions increase since 2021, primarily due to data centers and the delivery fleet it uses. Google, too, reported that its 2023 greenhouse gas emissions marked a 48 percent increase since 2019, mostly due to data center development and the production of goods and services for company operations. How else does A.I. impact the environment? Another dimension of A.I.’s environmental footprint is its water consumption. To put it simply, Ren explains that these powerful computers that run A.I. also get extremely hot. So, to keep them from overheating, data centers cool them with power air conditioning systems that are run by water. Water that is heated by computers is moved to massive cooling towers on top of a data center, and then is circulated back in. A data center’s direct water consumption is attributed to the water that evaporates during this process. This water loss is then left to the whims of the water cycle. “You don’t know how long [the water] will take to return or whether it will return to a specific geographic location,” Lee explains. “So where water is scarce, it’s a concern.” In 2023, data centers in the U.S. directly consumed about 66 billion liters of water. Bashir adds that the industry’s environmental impacts can also be seen farther up the supply chain. The GPUs that power A.I. data centers are made with rare earth elements, the extraction of which Bashir notes is resource intensive and can cause environmental degradation. How will data centers affect power consumption in the future? In order to meet A.I.’s hunger for power, companies are looking to expand fossil fuel energy projects: In July, developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline—a natural gas system that spans about 303 miles across Virginia—announced that they were considering a plan to boost the pipeline’s natural gas capacity by 25 percent. Earlier this year, the Atlanta-based electric utility Southern Company announced that it would backtrack on its previous announcement to retire a majority of its coal-fired power plants, citing growing demand from data centers. And when the grid can’t satisfy their needs, Lee says that data centers are now increasingly developing their own power sources—whether from renewable energy sources like nuclear or fossil fuel-based power plants. Pirio lives about 150 yards away from a data center that is not connected to the local grid. Instead, it’s powered by natural gas turbines with back-up diesel generators. He says that the noise pollution associated with the data center’s gas turbines is a huge problem for him and his neighbors, describing the din as a constant, humming sound. “Many of the neighbors, we got decimal reader apps, and it was off the charts. … They were like 90 decibels near our house,” he says. Pirio explains that he can no longer open the windows of his house on cool evenings because of the noise. He says another neighbor put mattresses against their window to block the noise. Pirio says he and his neighbors have no way of assessing what the emissions coming from the gas turbines are. “There’s just not structure for us to know, and they’re pretty much invisible,” he says. The Environmental Protection Energy notes that the presence of a fossil fuel-based power plant can significantly degrade air quality and emit toxic heavy metals like mercury into the atmosphere, harming local populations’ health. Vantage Data Centers, the company which runs the data center near Pirio, says it has installed Selective Catalytic Reductions (SCRs) which, according to its website, can reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel generators by up to 90 percent. Resident health and quality of life are not the only factors associated with data centers developing their own power sources. Even when data centers produce their own energy, Lee says the grid still provides them with significant backup infrastructure—which as Bashir explains, can still overwhelm the grid, causing it to become more unreliable for residents. How can A.I.’s data centers be made more sustainable? According to Lee, the renewable energy sector is simply not growing fast enough to meet the needs of A.I. While some analyses position data centers to grow at a rate of as much as 33 percent a year, the World Economic Forum says that global renewable energy capacity grew by 15.1 percent in 2024. Bashir and Lee both emphasize that much of the data center growth we are seeing is not being built on actual need, but speculation. According to Bashir, because tech companies are building data centers at such a rapid pace, these new centers will inevitably be powered by gas generators or other forms of fossil fuel, simply because infrastructure for widespread renewable energy does not yet exist. Beyond improving investments into renewable energy, Lee says that working toward algorithmic optimization is another way for A.I.’s data centers to lessen their carbon footprint. In a 2022 article, Lee—in collaboration with researchers at Meta—identified ways in which optimizing A.I. models can also improve sustainability. For example, researchers identified “data scaling”—in which a model is fed more data sets, resulting in a larger carbon footprint—as the current standard method to improve model accuracy. With a more efficient algorithm, energy costs could be significantly reduced. Lee emphasizes that those working toward creating more efficient A.I. must also focus on achieving a lower carbon footprint. Bashir adds that education remains an important tool to cutting back on A.I.’s emissions. “People can be educated on what are the A.I. tools available at their disposal,” he says. “How can they optimize their use? And [we need to tell] them of all the negative impacts of their use, so that they can decide if a particular use is worth this impact.” Get the latest Science stories in your inbox.

Education
Energy
Forests

Extraordinary pictures show what a common antibiotic does to E. coli

A commonly used class of antibiotics seems to kill bacteria like E. coli by breaking down their tough armour

The top image shows an untreated E.coli bacterium; the bottom shows a bacterium after 90 minutes of being exposed to the antibiotic polymyxin BCarolina Borrelli, Edward Douglas et al./Nature Microbiology The way antibiotics called polymyxins pierce the armour of bacteria has been revealed in stunning detail by high-resolution microscopy, which could help us develop new treatments for drug-resistant infections. Polymyxins are commonly used as a last-resort treatment against some so-called gram-negative bacteria, which can cause infections such as pneumonia, meningitis and typhoid fever. “The top three World Health Organization priority pathogens are all gram-negative bacteria, and this is largely a reflection of their complex cell envelope,” says Andrew Edwards at Imperial College London. Around their inner cell, these bacteria have an outer surface layer containing molecules called lipopolysaccharides, which act like armour. We knew polymyxins target this outer layer, but how exactly they disrupt it and then kill bacteria wasn’t understood; neither was why the drugs don’t always work. Now, Edwards and his colleagues have used biochemical experiments and atomic force microscopy – in which a needle just a few nanometres wide creates an image of a cell by sensing its shape – to reveal that one of the two types of polymyxin used therapeutically, called polymyxin B, causes strange bulges to break out on the surface of the gram-negative bacterium E. coli. Minutes after the protrusions appear, the bacterium begins to quickly shed its lipopolysaccharides, which the researchers detected in the solution it was in. The researchers say the antibiotic’s presence triggers the bacterium to try to put more and more “bricks” of lipopolysaccharide in its defensive wall. But as it adds bricks, it is also shedding some, temporarily leaving gaps in its defences that allow the antibiotic to enter and kill it. “The antibiotics are a bit like a crowbar that helps these bricks come out of the wall,” says Edwards. “The outer membrane doesn’t disintegrate; it doesn’t fall off. But there are clearly gaps where the antibiotic can then get to the second membrane.” He and his colleagues also uncovered why the antibiotic doesn’t always work: it only affected bacteria that were active and growing. When bacteria were dormant, a state they can enter to survive environmental stress such as nutrient deprivation, the polymyxin B was ineffective, because it wasn’t producing its armour. Images of E. coli exposed to polymyxin B, showing changes to the outer layer of its membrane, from left to right: untreated; bacterium after 15 minutes of antibiotic exposure; after 30 minutes; after 60 minutes; after 90 minutesCarolina Borrelli, Edward Douglas et al. / Nature Microbiology However, the researchers found that providing sugar to the E. coli cells woke them from this dormant state and, within 15 minutes, armour production resumed and the cells were killed. The same is expected to apply to the other polymyxin antibiotic used therapeutically, polymyxin E. Edwards says it might be possible to target dormant bacteria by giving people sugars, but there are dangers to waking these pathogens from their dormant state. “You don’t necessarily want bacteria at an infection site to start multiplying rapidly because that has its own downsides,” he says. Instead, he adds, it might be possible to combine different drugs to bypass the hibernation state without waking the bacteria up.

Chemicals
Health
Nature

Climate Change and Pollution Threaten Europe's Resources, EU Warns

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic security, the EU's environmental agency said on Monday.The European Environment Agency said biodiversity in Europe is declining due to unsustainable production and consumption, especially in the food system.Due to over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and invasive alien species, more than 80% of protected habitats are in a poor or bad state, it said, while water resources are also under severe pressure.EUROPE'S FASTEST-WARMING CONTINENT"The degradation of our natural world jeopardises the European way of life," the agency said in its report: "Europe's environment 2025"."Europe is critically dependent on natural resources for economic security, to which climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat."Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent and is experiencing worsening droughts and other extreme weather events.But governments are grappling with other priorities including industrial competitiveness, and negotiations on EU climate targets have stoked divisions between richer and poorer countries.EU countries last week confirmed that the bloc will miss a global deadline to set new emissions-cutting targets due to divisions over the plans among EU governments.TIME RUNNING OUT, AGENCY SAYS"The window for meaningful action is narrowing, and the consequences of delay are becoming more tangible," executive director Leena Yla-Mononen said."We are approaching tipping points - not only in ecosystems, but also in the social and economic systems that underpin our societies."(Reporting by Bart Meijer. Editing by Mark Potter)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate
Pollution
Resources

‘Climate Tech’ is a meaningless buzzword. Let’s do this instead

“Climate tech” isn’t a thing. It has shifted in recent years from a category to define clean energy companies to an umbrella phrase that loses meaning the more we use it. Granted, the term is everywhere: inserted into VC pitch decks, plastered on billboards along highways from San Francisco to Austin to Boston, wedged into government policy papers, and featured prominently on conference agendas. Media properties from CNBC to GreenBiz rely on it as a traffic-driving category. And there’s a reason why. A changing climate is the most complex and vast challenge and opportunity confronting our society today. That also means we can’t afford ambiguity. We need accountability. We need progress. We need to reengineer infrastructure with advanced tech that future-proofs as it solves urgent and complex problems. Now.  Which means we need precision. And we need to acknowledge that infrastructure and markets that have served us for so long are failing—and in need of rebuilding to anticipate and meet future challenges. Our world is in desperate need of solutions tied to specific applications and impact across energy tech, waste tech, food tech, and carbon tech. We need solutions that advance specific areas of deeply specialized work with distinct metrics and challenges like energy storage, batteries, food security, and sustainable fuel development. And, we need talent trained and sharpened to tackle these specific problems. Ambiguity is the enemy of progress Progress requires clarity. Energy technology is a distinct thing. Waste technology is a distinct thing. Transportation technology, energy storage, agriculture and food sustainability, carbon removal—these are specific categories with definable challenges and measurable outcomes. Each is firmly tied to infrastructure and requires dedicated engineering, specialized expertise, and different pools of capital. For example, grid storage is not a “climate tech” problem—it’s a specific energy challenge with concrete metrics: cost per kilowatt-hour, storage capacity, duration, and efficiency. Grid storage is about optimizing supply and demand, the outcome of which is a financial, political, and engineering goal, not a moral imperative. We must connect the promise and hype of AI-powered software solutions to their physical applications in the real world. Why? Because solving these big, specific problems requires more than computation behind a screen. Realizing the promise of AI to transform and improve is only possible if it enters the physical realm and changes the mechanics of existing ways of doing things. Calling the solutions to these problems “climate tech” is a disservice to the work because it no longer adequately captures the scale and range of what’s required. Breaking “climate tech” down to drive breakthroughs We need to build and invest in technologies that are better, faster, cheaper than what came before and solve real problems—rather than loaded words that offer environmental promise and not much else.  The trajectory of biotech offers a solid framework. Rather than lumping everything under a term like “health tech,” industry pioneers stood up clearly defined categories, including: immunotherapy, CRISPR, mRNA vaccine development, oncology, longevity, and so on. Each domain pursued a specific set of problems and attracted talent and capital to solve them. The result? Breakthroughs.  Whether we realize it or not, software also focused in recent years, which has helped to accelerate progress. Information technology gave way to specific technical disciplines like cybersecurity, cloud computing, and enterprise tools. Category focus allowed companies to gain market share and differentiate with customer experience and accountability front-and-center. It’s time that “climate tech” undergoes the same level of rigorous redefinition. And it’s not just because we’re approaching critical climate “tipping points” (which we are). It’s because the economic opportunity cost of not acting is too great. The future of American communities and industries from agriculture to manufacturing rests on our ability to effectively seize the opportunities in front of us and reengineer them.  Everything needs to be built for the future with engineering precision and a specific problem in mind to solve. We need infrastructure and hardware solutions to solve focused problems like recycling plastic for manufacturing, rendering cement carbon-neutral, electrifying freight transport, rethinking protein production, and removing carbon at scale. We cannot grow the economy in the future without approaching all tech as climate tech.  For example, the investment firm I cofounded, Incite, invested in Monarch, a startup with a fleet of AI-powered electric vehicles and tech solutions that work for agricultural clients ranging from dairy farmers to municipalities to winemakers. Monarch recently shipped MonarchOne™, an end-to-end physical AI platform for OEMs to more efficiently manage work and use data to influence operations across environments. Monarch isn’t a “climate tech” company. It’s an AI and robotics company with clear environmental benefits. Working toward a post-”climate tech” world “Climate tech” served its purpose as an initial rallying cry. It placed an urgent crisis squarely on the map of capital markets, boardrooms, and policy agendas. It made innovation to help us take care of our planet inevitable. Totally unsurprisingly, however, grouping a product or tech into the vague category enables more greenwashing and ambiguity when what we need is progress, focus, and accountability. In order to scale up the grid, add resilience to infrastructure, and prevent the housing market from insurance collapse, we need to retire not just the language but the entire categorization of “climate tech” completely. We must dismantle the umbrella term into specific, infrastructure-centered areas in need of urgent work.  Let’s refine our language. Words matter.  Tech is crucial to curbing negative environmental impacts. But the utility of “climate tech” is running on fumes. Let’s stop pretending it’s still a thing—and seize the opportunity to build and invest in the physical infrastructure, software, apps, and technologies that will power economic opportunities and enrich life around the world.

“Climate tech” isn’t a thing. It has shifted in recent years from a category to define clean energy companies to an umbrella phrase that loses meaning the more we use it. Granted, the term is everywhere: inserted into VC pitch decks, plastered on billboards along highways from San Francisco to Austin to Boston, wedged into government policy papers, and featured prominently on conference agendas. Media properties from CNBC to GreenBiz rely on it as a traffic-driving category. And there’s a reason why. A changing climate is the most complex and vast challenge and opportunity confronting our society today. That also means we can’t afford ambiguity. We need accountability. We need progress. We need to reengineer infrastructure with advanced tech that future-proofs as it solves urgent and complex problems. Now.  Which means we need precision. And we need to acknowledge that infrastructure and markets that have served us for so long are failing—and in need of rebuilding to anticipate and meet future challenges. Our world is in desperate need of solutions tied to specific applications and impact across energy tech, waste tech, food tech, and carbon tech. We need solutions that advance specific areas of deeply specialized work with distinct metrics and challenges like energy storage, batteries, food security, and sustainable fuel development. And, we need talent trained and sharpened to tackle these specific problems. Ambiguity is the enemy of progress Progress requires clarity. Energy technology is a distinct thing. Waste technology is a distinct thing. Transportation technology, energy storage, agriculture and food sustainability, carbon removal—these are specific categories with definable challenges and measurable outcomes. Each is firmly tied to infrastructure and requires dedicated engineering, specialized expertise, and different pools of capital. For example, grid storage is not a “climate tech” problem—it’s a specific energy challenge with concrete metrics: cost per kilowatt-hour, storage capacity, duration, and efficiency. Grid storage is about optimizing supply and demand, the outcome of which is a financial, political, and engineering goal, not a moral imperative. We must connect the promise and hype of AI-powered software solutions to their physical applications in the real world. Why? Because solving these big, specific problems requires more than computation behind a screen. Realizing the promise of AI to transform and improve is only possible if it enters the physical realm and changes the mechanics of existing ways of doing things. Calling the solutions to these problems “climate tech” is a disservice to the work because it no longer adequately captures the scale and range of what’s required. Breaking “climate tech” down to drive breakthroughs We need to build and invest in technologies that are better, faster, cheaper than what came before and solve real problems—rather than loaded words that offer environmental promise and not much else.  The trajectory of biotech offers a solid framework. Rather than lumping everything under a term like “health tech,” industry pioneers stood up clearly defined categories, including: immunotherapy, CRISPR, mRNA vaccine development, oncology, longevity, and so on. Each domain pursued a specific set of problems and attracted talent and capital to solve them. The result? Breakthroughs.  Whether we realize it or not, software also focused in recent years, which has helped to accelerate progress. Information technology gave way to specific technical disciplines like cybersecurity, cloud computing, and enterprise tools. Category focus allowed companies to gain market share and differentiate with customer experience and accountability front-and-center. It’s time that “climate tech” undergoes the same level of rigorous redefinition. And it’s not just because we’re approaching critical climate “tipping points” (which we are). It’s because the economic opportunity cost of not acting is too great. The future of American communities and industries from agriculture to manufacturing rests on our ability to effectively seize the opportunities in front of us and reengineer them.  Everything needs to be built for the future with engineering precision and a specific problem in mind to solve. We need infrastructure and hardware solutions to solve focused problems like recycling plastic for manufacturing, rendering cement carbon-neutral, electrifying freight transport, rethinking protein production, and removing carbon at scale. We cannot grow the economy in the future without approaching all tech as climate tech.  For example, the investment firm I cofounded, Incite, invested in Monarch, a startup with a fleet of AI-powered electric vehicles and tech solutions that work for agricultural clients ranging from dairy farmers to municipalities to winemakers. Monarch recently shipped MonarchOne™, an end-to-end physical AI platform for OEMs to more efficiently manage work and use data to influence operations across environments. Monarch isn’t a “climate tech” company. It’s an AI and robotics company with clear environmental benefits. Working toward a post-”climate tech” world “Climate tech” served its purpose as an initial rallying cry. It placed an urgent crisis squarely on the map of capital markets, boardrooms, and policy agendas. It made innovation to help us take care of our planet inevitable. Totally unsurprisingly, however, grouping a product or tech into the vague category enables more greenwashing and ambiguity when what we need is progress, focus, and accountability. In order to scale up the grid, add resilience to infrastructure, and prevent the housing market from insurance collapse, we need to retire not just the language but the entire categorization of “climate tech” completely. We must dismantle the umbrella term into specific, infrastructure-centered areas in need of urgent work.  Let’s refine our language. Words matter.  Tech is crucial to curbing negative environmental impacts. But the utility of “climate tech” is running on fumes. Let’s stop pretending it’s still a thing—and seize the opportunity to build and invest in the physical infrastructure, software, apps, and technologies that will power economic opportunities and enrich life around the world.

Climate
Agriculture
Energy

The used oil from your french fry order may be fueling your next flight

We followed the trail of grease from the kitchens of Le Diplomat and other D.C. restaurants to the commercial planes using alternative fuels.

Le Diplomate had an emergency. After a week of frying frites, the kitchen at Washington’s famous standby for French cuisine was full to bursting with used grease.Two waist-high storage tanks in the back of the restaurant sloshed to the brim with dark, viscous oil. During the weekend rush, the staff stored some of the spent grease in plastic tubs, but they were quickly running out of places to put it.Restaurants are prohibited from dumping grease down the drain because it would clog city sewers. So on a Tuesday afternoon, James Howell nimbly backed his truck into an alley behind Le Diplomate. He hopped down from the cab and snaked a rubber hose to the kitchen. Then with the flip of a switch and a loud drone, the hose slurped the used cooking oil into the truck’s gleaming steel 2,200-gallon tank.James Howell of Mahoney Environmental collects used cooking oil behind Duke’s Grocery in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)Three bottles — with raw oil on the left, half-processed produce in the middle and refined aviation fuel on the right — in the Neste laboratory in Rotterdam. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/For The Washington Post)The spent grease that restaurants unload as waste has become a valuable commodity. If you’ve been on a plane lately, there’s a chance that used cooking oil has helped launch you into the sky. Refineries recycle waste oil into kerosene pure enough to power a Boeing 777. The process is expensive — but it can create 70 to 80 percent less planet-warming pollution than making jet fuel out of crude oil, experts say.Last year, airlines burned 340 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) — nearly all of it made from used cooking oil or animal fat leftover from meat packaging.A series examining innovative and impactful approaches to addressing waste.That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the 114 billion gallons of fuel airlines burned overall, which create 2.5 percent of humanity’s carbon pollution, according to the International Energy Agency. But airlines have vowed to use much more SAF to lower their greenhouse emissions. European regulators have set strict rules requiring airlines to use more SAF over time, while U.S. regulators dole out tax credits to coax companies into buying it.This is the airlines’ main plan for dealing with their greenhouse emissions. Upgrading new planes with more efficient engines helps a little. And, one day, planes may run on electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells — but those are still decades away and may never work for long flights. To manage most of their climate impact for the foreseeable future, airlines are betting everything on alternative fuels.“Ninety-eight percent of [our greenhouse emissions] come from the fuel we burn,” said Lauren Riley, chief sustainability officer at United Airlines. “We’ll continue to look everywhere we can around technology and innovation of the aircraft itself and the engine, but we have to look at replacing our fuel.”Experts say this plan can work, but it’ll require fuel refiners to dramatically raise SAF production and find new raw materials besides old cooking oil to turn into kerosene. Depending on what they use and how they refine it, this new class of fuel could make flying more sustainable or cause a whole new set of environmental headaches.Howell, of Mahoney Environmental, collects used cooking oil in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)Harvesting the world’s greaseOn his rounds one day in early May, Howell made about two dozen stops at commercial kitchens around Washington, including an upscale cafe in the Michelin Guide, an assisted-living facility, a soul food spot where old chicken bones clogged the hose and an Italian restaurant where two unfortunate rats had drowned in a grease bin while diving for a wayward meatball. By midafternoon, his truck had about 1,200 gallons of grease in its belly.The company he works for, Mahoney Environmental, pays a few cents a gallon for the waste fat it collects from 90,000 businesses in the United States. Hundreds of companies gather grease around the globe — with an especially large haul in Southeast Asia, where densely packed restaurants serve up so much fried food that they’ve become the waste oil equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s rich petroleum fields.Waste oil from kitchens and animal tallow leftover from meatpacking plants used to be recycled into livestock feed. But now, they are mostly turned into fuel: Fat molecules hold a lot of energy, and they’re relatively easy to rearrange into diesel and kerosene.Turning fat into fuel keeps grease out of the landfill and petroleum in the ground. The demand, though, has begun to outstrip the supply.“There’s only so many waste oils to go around, and … you can’t really squeeze out much more,” said Nikita Pavlenko, who leads the aviation and fuels team at the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation. “People aren’t going to be frying more food or processing more cattle to get waste tallow to make fuel. You’re kind of stuck with what you have.”A hose is deployed to suck used cooking oil into the tank of a collection truck. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)Storage tanks for the feedstock (oil or tallow) at Neste in Rotterdam. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/For The Washington Post)As regulators push companies to buy and make more fuel from fat, the price of grease has been rising, along with the crime surrounding it.Thieves sometimes steal grease from collection bins and sell it themselves. Once, Howell said, he stopped at a restaurant only to find an empty bin and a confused cook, who told him an unmarked van had come by earlier and siphoned off their oil.Grease fraud is a problem, too. In some areas, used cooking oil sells for more than new cooking oil, prompting hucksters to sell virgin oil — including palm oil, which is associated with deforestation in Southeast Asia — as if it were used. It’s hard to catch, since fresh oil spiked with a little restaurant grease is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.“You’re potentially paying a premium for something that is worse than fossil fuel,” Pavlenko said.Fuel companies crack down on fraud by hiring inspectors to go out and check that their grease suppliers really are pumping their product out of deep fat fryers. On his route, Howell takes pictures of every bin before and after he drains it and uploads the proof to a Mahoney Environmental app that verifies where his oil came from.At the end of the day, Howell unloads his truck at a depot, where the oil is filtered to remove water, flour, spices and any other floating food chunks.Lab shift supervisor Jeroen van der Heijden in the laboratory at Neste. Neste produces sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), with a key presence in the Netherlands at its Rotterdam refinery. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/For The Washington Post)Turning fat into fuelUsed grease is a global commodity. Once it’s collected, tanker ships and pipelines carry it to fuel refineries around the world — much like they do for crude oil.Grease ships arrive a couple of times a week at a refinery in Rotterdam run by Neste, the world’s top producer of sustainable jet fuel.How grease is turned into jet fuelThe Neste facility, located in Europe’s largest port, is ramping up production of SAF made from used cooking oil. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/For The Washington Post)Fueling the appetite for sustainable fuelIn 2023, a Boeing 777 flew across the Atlantic Ocean burning fuel made from nothing but waste fat and sugar. The flight was a first, but it was really a publicity stunt — carrying Virgin Atlantic bigwigs, not paying passengers. The fuel is too expensive, and too scarce, for that to make business sense.Instead, Neste blends its french fry fuel with standard kerosene made from crude oil before delivering it to airports.SAF is almost identical to standard jet fuel, and it releases just as much CO2 when it’s burned. But experts say there’s a key difference: Drilling for oil takes carbon that was locked away underground and releases it into the atmosphere. Making fuel from used cooking oil and tallow takes carbon that was already circulating through the air and the bodies of plants and animals and recycles it. No new carbon moves from underground storage into the atmosphere.Sample vials at Neste. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/For The Washington Post)Site director Hanna van Luijk at Neste. (Ilvy Njiokiktjien/For The Washington Post)It takes energy to collect and transport used cooking oil, rearrange fat molecules into jet fuel and get that fuel to planes. But, overall, making and burning SAF adds as much as 80 percent less carbon to the atmosphere as making and burning fossil fuel from crude oil.Because there isn’t enough waste oil in the world to satisfy the airline industry’s thirst, companies are developing other ways to make low-carbon jet fuel. One option is to grow more crops like soy that can be crushed for oil and turned into jet fuel — although that raises the risk that more land will be cleared for farming in fragile ecosystems like the Brazilian Amazon. Environmentalists have raised similar concerns about raising more corn, sugar cane or beets to create ethanol and convert it into kerosene.“The problem with crop-based biofuels is it takes land to produce them at a time when we’re already expanding cropland … which means more deforestation, and the carbon losses are far greater than the potential savings from reducing fossil fuel use,” said Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment.Alternately, farmers could grow more cover crops on their fields between their regular planting seasons, which would create a new source of plant oils or ethanol without using extra land. Some companies have experimented with turning trash into jet fuel, but the most prominent player went bankrupt last year. Others are splitting water molecules to harvest their hydrogen and combining it with captured carbon to make fuel.Experts say it will take a combination of all these methods to make enough green fuel to power the world’s planes.Howell, of Mahoney Environmental, collects used cooking oil behind Umai Nori. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)The one thing every alternative fuel recipe has in common is that they are more expensive than fossil fuel — and experts say they always will be. Making SAF from waste oil is “locked in at a cost which is about two times the cost of fossil jet, and it’s going to be entirely reliant on subsidies,” according to Pavlenko. The other methods could be even more expensive, even after they’ve had time to raise production and lower costs.The future of the industry will depend on whether the United States keeps tax credits in place and the European Union stands by its green fuel mandates. Neste is expanding its Rotterdam refinery in anticipation of stricter E.U. blending rules, and in the United States, the first large-scale SAF operations started pumping out fuel in recent years in response to new tax credits that have since been weakened.Back at Le Diplomate, amid the evening dinner rush, frites flow out of the kitchen to feed hungry diners who are unwittingly helping launch planes into the sky with every bite.

Animals
Business
Climate

About $675 million earmarked for Texas projects is in limbo as Congress careens toward shutdown

Texas’ congressional delegation obtained tentative funding for infrastructure improvements, university research and other initiatives, but the nearly 350 earmarks are all in jeopardy.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. The Texas congressional delegation has secured about $675 million to pay for community projects across the state in federal spending bills for the next fiscal year. But the funds, informally known as earmarks, are all in jeopardy amid the threat of a government shutdown. Lawmakers returned to their districts last year empty-handed when Congress left earmarks out of stopgap legislation used to fund the government for the current fiscal year, which ends Tuesday. Now, local governments, universities and nonprofits in the state stand to lose out on millions of dollars for infrastructure improvements, research and more if both parties in Congress are unable to resolve an impasse that has stalled the spending package that includes the earmarks. Dallas Area Rapid Transit could miss out on the $250,000 secured by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, to modernize the Ledbetter Light Rail Station. Amarillo could end up without the $1.75 million Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, acquired to help design a new wastewater treatment facility in the city. And the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Houston may lose out on $350,000 sought by Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, for facility repairs and upgrades that Nehls said could otherwise be used for youth programs. These Texas projects are just a few of the ones lawmakers are fighting for as they near a government funding deadline. Most of the funding would be administered through the following agencies: Department of Housing and Urban Development: Nearly $230 million would pay for facility renovations, community centers, trail improvements and other infrastructure and community projects. Department of Transportation: Texas lawmakers secured about $120 million for projects to bolster public transportation, highways, airports and more. Department of Justice: About $80 million would be administered by the Justice Department for local law enforcement agencies and nonprofits. Environmental Protection Agency: About $54 million would go toward water treatment projects and efforts to deliver clean drinking water. Army Corps of Engineers: Nearly $50 million would pay for construction, operation and maintenance on dams, waterways and ship channels. Department of Commerce: Universities and other research institutions in Texas would collectively receive about $42 million through the Commerce Department. In all, the House’s package of a dozen appropriation bills contains nearly $8 billion in earmarks, with requests for Texas making up about 8% of these funds. Out of Texas’ 37 representatives in the House, 33 asked for earmark funding, with each requester receiving money for at least one community project. Republican Reps. Pat Fallon of Sherman, Craig Goldman of Fort Worth, Chip Roy of Austin and Keith Self of McKinney were the four who skipped out on earmark requests. On the Senate side, Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Ted Cruz also abstained from submitting requests for “congressionally directed spending” — the term for earmarks in the upper chamber. ⚠️ TIME’S ALMOST UP ⚠️Independent Texas journalism is worth fighting for. Join us in this final push. DONATE TODAY Both senators have previously spoken out against earmarks and advocated to strip them from appropriations bills. Republican lawmakers previously banned the practice after they won control of Congress in 2010, but Democrats revived it in 2021. Cornyn pushed back against the move, calling earmarks “a playground for quid pro quo” that was adding to the country’s mounting debt. When earmarks first returned to Congress, most Texas Republicans did not request funding. Roy even led a group of 18 House Republicans in issuing a letter pledging to “take a stand against legislative bribery” by not requesting earmark money. But in the years since 2021, the majority of Texas Republicans in the House have embraced the practice. About 75% of funds earmarked for Texas in House appropriations bills for the 2026 fiscal year were secured by Republicans, according to an analysis by The Texas Tribune. The five Texans who are poised to rake in the most earmarked funds are all Republicans: Ellzey, Carter and Gonzales each serve on the House Appropriations Committee, the powerful panel that oversees federal spending bills. Ellzey is looking to bring home $50 million to renovate a U.S. Marine Corps facility in Fort Worth — the most expensive earmark for Texas. He’s also poised to secure funds to fix water infrastructure issues in Glenn Heights, a small town at the southern edge of Dallas County, if the spending package makes it through Congress. “That’s something that they really need,” Ellzey said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “I’m very proud of the requests that I made.” Ellzey said he hopes Congress avoids passing what’s known as a continuing resolution — a short-term funding bill to keep the government open — and instead gets it together to approve the dozen appropriations bills that include the local funding. Other notable earmarks include waterway improvements such as the more than $29 million that Babin and Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Victoria, hope to secure for operations and maintenance work on the Houston, Corpus Christi and Matagorda ship channels, which export massive amounts of crude oil and other energy products. All 12 Democrats from Texas secured funding for at least one project in the appropriations bill drafts. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, was the state’s top Democratic earmarker, with nearly $19 million largely devoted to economic development projects, flood and drainage improvements and local law enforcement programs. Among the funds she has tentatively secured is a $1 million allotment to develop a “space and planetary science” program at Alief Independent School District in collaboration with Rice University, and more than $3 million to renovate Houston’s Metropolitan Multiservice Center for people with disabilities. Rep. Julie Johnson, a Democrat from Farmers Branch who is in line to bring more than $15 million back to her district, said she is thrilled about the potential to fund health care and transportation projects in North Texas, but remains worried that the earmarks could become casualties of the budget negotiation deadlock. “We have a lot of disagreements in this budget right now,” she said. “So all this funding is at risk.” Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Shape the future of Texas at the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin! We bring together Texas’ most inspiring thinkers, leaders and innovators to discuss the issues that matter to you. Get tickets now and join us this November. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.

Energy
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