Publication - ialTWq2jDsUHGPLhseEW01pE7jP2

Default

en-US-TonyNeural

A worker-owned cooperative is deploying PyroTowers to produce biochar, which helps farmers in the developing world improve their yields.
The food that makes it to your plate is but a fraction of what actually grew in a field somewhere. Cassava, corn, wheat, rice — all critical crops produce waste biomass that farmers might be burning or throwing into piles to rot, both of which send planet-warming carbon into the atmosphere. Increasingly, though, they are turning all those husks and stalks into biochar that captures carbon and improves yields.
This material is a simple, clever way to catalyze photosynthesis. As plants grow, they suck CO2 out of the air, but that carbon returns to the sky when they die and decompose. Heat those dead plants in a low oxygen environment, though, and they turn to concentrated, crumbly carbon that’s a magnet for nutrients. Workers “charge” this biochar by soaking it in manure or other fertilizers,​​ then farmers add it to their fields. (They can even infuse it with mycorrhizal fungi, which helps plants proliferate and captures still more carbon. Beneficial microbes love growing in the rough structure of charred material.) Research has found that this can significantly boost the growth of crops and help soils retain water.
The trick is creating the right conditions to produce quality biochar without combusting and destroying the biomass. To that end, the worker cooperative PlantVillage+ is deploying an automated “PyroTower” in communities in the developing world, a solar-powered furnace that blasts waste with temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. During an eight-hour run, the device can generate nearly 2,000 pounds of biochar for locals to put back in the ground. It takes about two hours to assemble and disassemble to move from one place to another.
“For us, it was keeping it as simple as possible and as manageable as possible,” said Sheldon Indanya, who owns Indan Engineering Solutions Ltd. in Kenya and engineered the PyroTower. “The whole concept as we started designing was that this is a machine that will be deployed in very rugged areas where availability of resources, let’s say electricity and such stuff, won’t be available.”
The PyroTower is relatively cheap to set up and run, too, at a cost of around $15,000 — 100 times cheaper than industrial production. Because PlantVillage+ is a cooperative, members vote on how the program should operate. “Workers own the means of production,” said David Hughes, a professor at Penn State and founder of the organization. “So they own all of the assets in the organization, and we vote. The mission of PlantVillage+ is to eradicate poverty and reverse climate change.”
The PyroTower is an investment that should pay dividends over time. Whereas offsetting emissions by paying to plant trees is somewhat precarious because those forests can be lost to wildfires, biochar is more durable — it can persist in soil for millennia. Biochar is also more easily quantifiable than a forest, because PlantVillage+ knows how much carbon is being stored based on the weight of what’s produced. Individuals and corporations can pay for its production through a subscription, so operators make money both locally and internationally. Because this is a cooperative, 95 percent of the money goes to workers. “That, together with the biochar, starts to bring in revenue,” said Dries Roobroeck, owner and CEO of AgCinX, which helped develop the PyroTower.
In contrast to other carbon removal technologies like direct air capture, in which facilities suck CO2 out of the air at a significant cost, biochar has the potential to simultaneously improve the livelihoods of small-holder farmers while sequestering loads of carbon on the cheap. “Africa has natural abilities to be the world’s carbon factory,” Hughes said. “There is a lot of water, if you can hold onto it. You have water plus sunshine — photosynthesis — you can just grow a lot. And our thesis is that you can increase food productivity, creating lots of jobs.”
Some soils benefit more from biochar than others, though. Already-fertile dirt, for example, might not need the nutritional boost. And soils rich in clay already hold onto water well.
But fast-draining sandy ground can benefit enormously, said Sanjai Parikh, a soil chemist at the University of California, Davis, who wasn’t involved in the PyroTower project. Tropical soils — which are “weathered,” having lost nutrients over time — also get a major boost from biochar. Indeed, thousands of years ago, the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon added table craps and charcoal to the Earth to create terra preta, a highly productive soil. “If you add in something like biochar, it will benefit those highly weathered soils, because it now has something that can hold those nutrients,” Parikh said. “So that’s really where biochar comes in best, is in tropical soil.”
Even if it’s not dramatically improving soil, biochar has serious potential as a negative-emissions technology. Startups are exploring how they might bury biochar, essentially putting coal back in the ground. Otherwise, crop dregs left to rot or burn will remain a major contributor to climate change. “Biomass is an enormous problem, and there have to be good ways to dispose of that,” Parikh said. “If we’re talking just climate change mitigation, maybe just burying big piles of biochar is the way to go.”

This new machine churns out carbon-storing biochar on the cheap

Nearly 150 land and environment defenders were killed or disappeared last year, most for standing up to mining and logging.
Since the 1990’s, Martin Egot has protected his tribe’s ancestral homelands near Nigeria’s Cross River National Park. Egot, who is Indigenous Ekuri, helped establish the Ekuri Initiative, an organization dedicated to protecting parts of the rainforest.
In 2009, the Ekuri Initiative successfully pushed the Cross River government, a state in Nigeria, to put a moratorium on logging activity in community-controlled areas of the rainforest, and were able to enforce the logging ban by deploying eco-guards: Ekuri men who patrol the rainforest to deter developers and illegal loggers.
But in 2023, the Nigerian government lifted the moratorium to allow logging. Then, later that year, a local timber company arrived without proper permits. The Ekuri eco-guards confiscated the company’s logging equipment, but their actions caused army personnel to enter the village, firing their weapons. There were no reported injuries, but the violence all but ended the Ekuri Initiative as eco-guards are unable to compete with private and government security forces hired to protect logging companies moving into the area.
“In Cross River, the forest is almost completely gone everywhere else,” said Egot. “What we still have is found around the communities. So there’s a whole lot of pressure.”
The violence that Ekuri environment and land defenders face isn’t uncommon. This week, Global Witness, an organization that investigates environmental and human rights abuses, released a new report documenting 146 cases of homicides and kidnappings of environmental and land defenders in 2024 – an average of three people killed or disappeared every week. The report’s authors say attacks occurred after speaking out or taking action to defend their lands, with many opposing mining, logging, and other extractive industries.
One third of the collected incidents happened to Indigenous peoples, while Afro-descendants, people with ancestral ties to enslaved Africans, comprised two cases this year. Most Afro-descendants reside in South America, like Brazil, and are stewards of biodiverse land. Since the organization began tracking violence against land and environment defenders in 2012, there have been a total of 2,253 cases.
“All these years reporting on the realities of defenders across the world, highlight, to me, the disproportionate nature of the attacks that Indigenous peoples in particular, and Afro descendants, are having to suffer year in and year out,” said Laura Furones, the report’s author.
According to the study, Colombia is considered the deadliest country for land and environment defenders with the highest number of lethal attacks with 48 cases, a third of the total, global amount. However, 80 percent of kidnapping and murder cases occurred in Latin America. Global Witness attributes the high rates of lethal violence to countries with weak state presence that enable corruption and unbalanced legal systems making resource conflicts more deadly. In Asia, the Philippines saw the highest number of killings and disappearances with most violence linked to government bodies.
It’s estimated that around 54 percent of the world’s critical mineral deposits needed for green energy and AI needs – cobalt, lithium, nickel, and copper – are located on or near Indigenous lands, often driving violence. “Amid rampant resource use, escalating environmental pressure, and a rapidly closing window to limit [global] warming to 1.5C, [industries] are treating land and environmental defenders like they are a major inconvenience instead of canaries in a coal mine about to explode,” said Rachel Cox, a senior campaigner at Global Witness.
In Nigeria, Egot says he hopes to restore the Ekuri Initiative, and find ways to introduce more jobs to the region, including as eco-guards, as a way to curb logging in his community’s homelands.
“We are calling on international communities to continue to talk to our state, our government, because Nigeria signs to a whole lot of environmental treaties,” he said. “So these treaties that they sign into, do they actually respect these treaties? Do they follow up on these treaties?

Defending the Earth is deadly work. A new report illuminates how much.

Hard-line immigration policy, climate change, and labor shortages are colliding to create a real problem for U.S. farms.
When President Trump campaigned for his second term on the promise of deporting millions of undocumented workers from the United States, farm groups were quick to voice their discontent. An immigration policy focused solely on removing those without legal status “would cripple agricultural production in America,” according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, a powerful agricultural lobbying group.
Economists, labor organizers, and immigrant rights advocates agreed. About 40 percent of farmworkers in the country are foreign-born, unauthorized workers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently found. Some farmers already complain that it’s hard enough to fill agricultural jobs domestically; without foreign labor, they argue, the nation’s food system would grind to a halt.
Now, the Trump administration appears to be making moves aimed at alleviating some of the economic burden felt by farm employers. Late last month, the Department of Agriculture announced the agency would end the survey used to set minimum wages for migrant farmworkers on temporary visas. Some farm groups welcome cheaper labor costs, but experts say falling wages — coupled with the administration’s mass deportation agenda — will ultimately scramble the business of hiring farmworkers.
The H-2A visa program allows farmers to hire seasonal workers from abroad, the vast majority of whom come from Mexico. These workers are paid according to something called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, or AEWR. Every year, the AEWR is determined using the previous year’s Agricultural Labor Survey — more commonly referred to as the Farm Labor Survey, or FLS, which asks farm employers about their workers’ hours and wages. In a sense, the AEWR sets a wage floor for all farm laborers: U.S.-born workers must earn at least as much as H-2A workers when performing the same job.
In an announcement on August 28, the USDA said the agency would discontinue its use of the FLS, calling it “no longer necessary.” Without this mechanism in place, wages for farmworkers — regardless of their legal status — are likely to fall, experts say.
Some farm groups celebrated the move, arguing that AEWRs in recent years have grown too high and present a burden to their business. Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank, argued that ending the FLS would usher in a new “wage rule employers have been begging for.”
But labor groups contend that farmworkers — whether they are guest workers, U.S.-born, or undocumented — are not paid a fair or even livable wage.
“What the Trump administration just did, it essentially liberalizes the entire labor market in the food system,” said Jose Oliva, campaigns director at the HEAL Food Alliance, a coalition of groups representing workers in the food supply chain. The resulting financial precarity would add another layer of risk to a profession that’s already one of the lowest paid in the country — as well as on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
Heat is the deadliest extreme weather event. For farmworkers, whose jobs include strenuous outdoor physical activity, that risk is even more pronounced. Researchers have found that workers in the agriculture industry are 35 times more likely to die from heat-related illness than any other workers. Beyond high temperatures, farmworkers are also especially vulnerable to other climate impacts — such as wildfire smoke and flash flooding.
“The job is already one of the more hazardous, dangerous, and deadly jobs, according to statistics,” said Costa, from the Economic Policy Institute. “It’ll probably get worse,” he added, noting that the Trump administration may or may not choose to implement a nation-wide heat safety standard for workers currently under review by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The USDA did not respond to a request for comment.
“It is clear that the Trump administration is moving to cut wages for the H2A program,” Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers, a labor union, said in a statement to Grist. “Beyond the obviously harmful impact on H2A workers themselves, this will also undercut the wages of local farm workers, of all statuses including U.S. citizens.”
The H-2A visa program has grown steadily over the years, as farm employers have struggled to fill jobs with U.S. citizens. Some farmers call the program overly bureautic and burdensome — but many feel bringing in migrant workers is their only, or best, option when it comes to hiring, especially in an era where the federal government is set on deporting undocumented workers. Immigration raids on U.S. farms, part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation strategy will likely make farmers even more reliant on the migrant visa program, according to labor experts.
Brooke Rollins, the Trump agriculture secretary, has claimed the administration will create a farm workforce that’s “100 percent American.” But currently, minimum wages for farmworkers are so low that they do not attract very many U.S.-born workers to the agriculture industry, said Edgar Franks, political director for Familias Unidas por la Justicia, a farmworker labor union. “If you’re trying to attract local workers, the AEWR is going to be way too low,” said Franks.
Oliva, at the HEAL Food Alliance, argued that if wages for farm work fall even lower, employers will see a drop in able and willing workers. “What you’re essentially going to see — and this is something I am 100% convinced of — is an even lower participation in the job market,” he said. Franks disagreed. “I still think, even if the wages go down to $10 an hour, people from other countries would still line up to come and work under the H-2A visa,” he said, adding that their economic opportunities are often far worse in their home country.
Despite the grueling nature of farm work, the H-2A visa program — which allows agricultural employers to hire temporary or seasonal workers from abroad — is arguably in more demand than ever. The program was developed in 1986 during the Reagan administration, as part of a broader immigration reform package aimed at cracking down on unauthorized migration into the U.S. It has grown dramatically over time; the USDA found that H-2A certifications tripled from 2010 to 2019. (There is no cap on how many H-2A visas are offered annually.) Last year, nearly 400,000 visas were issued, according to the Farm Bureau.
If wages for agricultural workers fall, Oliva said, those who do take those jobs may feel pressure to work longer hours to make ends meet.
Farmworkers lack many labor protections at the federal level; for example, they are excluded from receiving overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act. In the absence of stronger labor rules, “workers are discouraged from taking breaks and drinking water because you’re not going to make any money if you’re not working,” said Oliva. That level of physical exertion is dangerous when combined with climate change driving up high temperatures.
Following the USDA’s announcement, the Department of Labor published an interim final rule aimed at adjusting its AEWR methodology — although it’s unclear exactly how the agency plans to do so. (The labor department did not respond to a request for comment.)
This is not the first time that federal agencies under a Trump administration have tried to revamp how seasonal migrant farm laborers are paid. During the first Trump administration, the USDA similarly moved to end the FLS; United Farm Workers sued, successfully blocking the decision.
In her statement, United Farm Worker president Romero said the labor union is committed to “fighting exploitation and deportation at the same time.”
Asked whether the group would sue the USDA over its move to end the FLS a second time, a spokesperson for the union said it was too soon to tell.

Farmworkers already face harsh conditions. Now they may have to deal with a pay cut.

Manufacturers sued to stop a Colorado law requiring air quality warnings, arguing gas stoves are safe. Some of their websites once said the opposite.
The home appliance industry would like you to believe that gas-burning stoves are not a risk to your health — and several companies that make the devices are scrambling to erase their prior acknowledgements that they are.
That claim is at the heart of a lawsuit the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers has filed against the state of Colorado to stop it from requiring natural gas stoves, which burn methane, to carry health labels not unlike those on every pack of cigarettes. “Understand the air quality implications of having an indoor gas stove,” the warning would read.
The law was to take effect August 5 but is now on hold, and state officials did not respond to a request for comment. In its federal lawsuit, the Association — whose board includes representatives of LG Electronics, BSH Home Appliance Corp. (which makes Bosch appliances), Whirlpool, and Samsung Electronics — asserts that the labeling requirement is “unconstitutional compelled speech” and illegal under the First Amendment. It calls the legislation a climate law disguised as a health law and, most strikingly, it claims there is “no association between gas stoves and adverse health outcomes.”
Yet LG, BSH, Whirlpool, and Samsung have published information on their websites directly contradicting that claim and lauded the health benefits of electric and induction stoves.
“Traditional gas appliances can emit harmful pollutants, which can compromise indoor air quality and pose health risks,” reads a blog post, titled “Life’s Good When It’s Electrified,” that LG published in May of 2024. “By switching to electric appliances, these risks are substantially reduced, ensuring a cleaner and safer home environment.”
Another LG page noted that “induction surfaces remain cool to the touch and unlike gas, is better for kitchen air quality” as recently as May 25, according to an archived version of the site maintained by Wayback Machine. It was later revised to eliminate mention of gas, reading “Surfaces remain cool to the touch — no open flames or hot coils. No fumes, either, so it’s [sic] air quality-friendly.”
BSH’s page on Bosch induction cooktops notes that the devices are “safer to use because unlike other types of cooktops, they do not release indoor air pollutants during cooking.” Whirlpool wrote that induction cooktops might help “reduce indoor air pollutants.”
And until last week, a page on Samsung’s U.S. website said “induction cooktops can … help remove concerns over indoor air pollution, creating a sustainable and healthier home environment. The page’s source code did not appear to have been updated since 2022. Samsung did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but the page was taken down shortly after Grist reached out to the company.
Itai Vardi, a researcher with the Energy and Policy Institute, was the first to notice the discrepancies between what the Association said in its lawsuit and what some of its manufacturers have said in the past. “The statements coming from them directly contradict the very strong language in this lawsuit,” Vardi said. “And that, I think, deserves some scrutiny.”
In its lawsuit, the Association argues that “the potential health risks of cooking with gas are no different than cooking with electricity” and acknowledging the ways gas-burning appliances can harm respiratory health promotes “non-consensus, scientifically controversial, and factually misleading” messages. It adds that “there is scant scientific support” for disclosing health risks associated with gas appliances.
Asked for comment, the organization referred to a statement it issued August 6 saying “no study has found that gas stoves cause respiratory health issues.”
When reached for comment, a BSH representative stated that the company is as of now “in complete alignment” with the Association’s position. An LG representative noted that the most pollution-acknowledging statements on their website were in fact made by the company’s UK branch, but did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the UK and US divisions disagree on the risks of LG products.
“This is a troubling attempt by these companies’ to quickly erase their own public acknowledgement of the dangers of gas stoves,” said Vardi. “But you can scrub your website, not the fact of gas stove pollution.”
Scientific evidence that gas stoves pollute by releasing dangerous concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, benzene, and methane has piled up for the past half-century. In 1970, scientist Carl Shy showed that families exposed to high levels of nitrogen dioxide indoors are at greater risk of asthma and other respiratory illnesses than those who are not. Nine years later, scientist Bernard Goldstein identified the fuel as the likely source of all that nitrogen. A bevy of studies and papers in the decades since came to similar conclusions. One 2022 study estimated that 12 percent of American children with asthma develop that respiratory condition solely due to living in homes with gas stoves.
Appliance manufacturers and the natural gas industry are no stranger to promoting their products regardless of known health risks. “There’s been a campaign by industry to keep the science under wraps or to confuse it, deny it,” said Abe Scarr of the consumer-protection nonprofit Public Interest Working Group.
The lobbyists at the American Gas Association have worked hard to popularize gas stoves: At one point, the organization even provided the stoves Julia Child used in her popular cooking show. The campaign went beyond product placement: When information on the health risks of gas stoves began to emerge in the mid-1970s, industry lobbyists launched “Operation Attack,” a million-dollar marketing campaign to bring the stoves into even more kitchens. This worked: today, about 40% of Americans cook with gas. They also funded their own research, which cast doubt on independent findings on the health risks of gas stoves.
Environmental health sciences professor Misbath Daouda of the University of California, Berkeley, was recently part of a pilot study replacing gas stoves in low-income New York City apartments with induction stoves. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations in those apartments, she said, dropped by over 50 percent within months – and the families who lived there liked their new cooktops better than the old ones, she said.
The association between gas stoves and adverse health outcomes, Daouda said, “is clear.”
“I’m not sure who they are referring to when they say the majority of studies” don’t support that conclusion, she said.

Gas stove makers quietly delete air pollution warnings as they fight mandatory health labels

A U.S. renewable diesel refiner purchased tallow from slaughterhouses supplied by ranches fined for illegal clearing of Brazilian forests.
This story was produced by Repórter Brasil and co-published with Grist.
Diamond Green Diesel, or DGD, a U.S. leader in renewable diesel production, imports beef tallow from a supplier fed by Brazilian slaughterhouses fined for illegal deforestation. These include a plant that purchased cattle from a rancher described by Brazilian authorities as the “largest destroyer of the Amazon” ever investigated.
Repórter Brasil obtained documents about DGD’s supplier chain and identified, in addition to this case, connections to at least two other slaughterhouses that bought cattle from ranchers fined for practices associated with large-scale illegal deforestation.
These cases raise a red flag about the potential harmful climate impacts of alternative fuels. Despite biofuels’ image as a ‘green’ fuel, the use of livestock inputs in their production can increase deforestation, warns Tim Searchinger, a senior researcher at Princeton University. “The reason land is being deforested is to meet growing demand for food and biofuels,” he says.
Deforestation accounts for around 13 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to United Nations estimates. In Brazil, it is the leading driver of such emissions.
On its website, DGD claims its industrial plant can cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent compared to fossil diesel. However, it does not mention any measures to prevent the purchase of tallow sourced from deforested pastures. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
In addition to fueling cars and trucks, DGD’s Texas facility produces SAF — short for “sustainable aviation fuel,” a product intended to reduce the climate footprint of the aviation industry. Avfuel Corporation, one of the main independent jet fuel suppliers in the U.S., received the first SAF delivery from DGD in December 2024.
From forest destruction to biofuel production
According to customs documents reviewed by Repórter Brasil, DGD regularly purchases beef tallow from the Fasa group, a Brazilian company specializing in processing slaughterhouse byproducts. DGD and Fasa belong to the same economic group, as the Brazilian company was acquired in 2022 by Texas-based multinational Darling Ingredients, one of DGD’s owners through a joint venture with Valero Energy. Also headquartered in Texas, Valero Energy is one of the largest fuel producers in the U.S.
The Fasa group has subsidiaries in the Amazon called Araguaia and Rio Verde, which source tallow from various slaughterhouses in the region. The supplier’s history, according to official documents obtained by the report, includes Frialto, a slaughterhouse from Mato Grosso identified through GTAs (animal transport guides) purchasing cattle from a rancher arrested by the Brazilian federal police in 2023. He was accused by Brazil’s Federal Prosecution Office of clearing an area of forest equivalent to about 12,000 American football fields and is identified by the agency as the largest Amazonian deforester ever investigated.
One month after the arrest, Repórter Brasil revealed that Frialto had bought cattle from the rancher and his relatives. Now, the outlet has obtained an official letter from the government of Mato Grosso, dated October 2023, related to the renewal of Frialto’s operating license. In the document, a Fasa subsidiary is listed as the recipient of residues generated by Frialto. According to customs records, this same Fasa unit sent beef tallow to DGD multiple times between 2023 and 2024.
At the time of the arrest, Frialto stated it had suspended business with the rancher’s properties. Repórter Brasil contacted the slaughterhouse again to inquire about its dealings with Fasa and any measures taken to avoid sourcing from illegally deforested areas but received no response.
Fasa, Darling Ingredients, Valero Energy, and DGD also did not respond to requests for comment.
Another illegal deforestation case linked to DGD’s supply chain involves the LKJ slaughterhouse. Cattle movement records accessed by Repórter Brasil show that in July 2023, LKJ purchased animals from a ranch in Brazil’s Cerrado biome — called Apucarana Farm — which had 381 hectares embargoed after environmental authorities confirmed illegal deforestation. The Cerrado is another native biome in Brazil facing rapid destruction and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.
A Fasa subsidiary in Pará state regularly received residues from LKJ between 2022 and 2023, according to corporate documents obtained by Repórter Brasil showing truck routes for raw material deliveries. That same subsidiary also supplied beef tallow to DGD from 2023 to 2024, according to customs records.
When contacted, LKJ attributed the cattle purchase from Apucarana Farm to a failure in its internal procedures, stating that it has a policy of not buying from embargoed areas. (See the full response here.) The company claimed it has since blocked both the farm and another property from the same supplier from future sales. LKJ did not comment on its business relationship with Fasa.
Like other slaughterhouses, LKJ is a signatory to an agreement with Brazil’s Federal Prosecution Office — known by its Portuguese acronym, MPF — that requires adopting anti-deforestation criteria in cattle procurement in the Amazon. In May of this year, the MPF released audit results focused on LKJ’s operations, revealing that roughly 2,700 animals slaughtered by the company in 2022 — about 8 percent of the audited sample — did not meet the agreement’s criteria. It was the worst result among the six audited slaughterhouses in the state of Tocantins, where LKJ is located.
In 2023 and 2024, in addition to sourcing tallow from Fasa, DGD also imported tallow directly from Minerva, Brazil’s second-largest beef company, customs data show.
Last year, a study by the organization Mighty Earth identified the company as one of the clients supplied by the largest deforester in the Brazilian Pantanal, who was fined the highest penalty ever imposed by the Mato Grosso State Department of the Environment. The individual was held responsible by the state’s Civil Police for the destruction of 81,200 hectares of native vegetation — an area larger than the island of Manhattan — through the aerial spraying of pesticides containing chemicals also found in “Agent Orange.” At the time of the publication, which used data gathered by Repórter Brasil, the company reported that it had blocked the rancher from future business.
Minerva’s plant in Araguaína, in the state of Tocantins, is among those listed in customs documents exporting tallow to DGD. A 2021 Repórter Brasil report showed that this facility had purchased cattle from a rancher fined for illegally clearing 198 acres of Amazon rainforest. Another investigation that same year revealed that the plant’s indirect supply chain included a farm where Brazilian authorities rescued workers from conditions analogous to slavery.
Minerva was contacted to comment on its cattle procurement policies and its relationship with DGD, but did not respond.
Brazil is exporting more tallow to the U.S.
In 2022, Brazil exported 63,000 tons of tallow to the U.S. In 2023, that number jumped to 202,000 tons. And in just the first five months of 2025, Brazil had already shipped 111,000 tons, according to data from the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade, and Services.
The increase coincides with the acquisition of the Fasa group by Darling Ingredients. Last year, the U.S. was the destination for 90 percent of all Brazilian tallow exports.
Beef tallow is derived from bovine tissue waste and has a relatively low production cost, as it is extracted from less valuable parts of the animal, such as the carcass. Its use is often described as “animal recycling” and is commonly promoted as a solution for disposing of slaughterhouse residues.
Because it is considered a byproduct, tallow is not subject to the same traceability requirements as beef. However, according to Searchinger, tallow is a valuable commodity for the food industry — it is, for example, widely used in animal feed. When diverted to fuel production, he explains, it increases the demand for vegetable oils and other fats to replace it. “This, in turn, increases pressure on land,” he says.
Searchinger argues that the growth of biofuels is only viable because of public subsidies. He believes that instead of supporting the sector, rich countries should fund environmental conservation in the Global South.
“A $100-per-ton CO2 tax on airline tickets could generate a $100 billion annual fund. That money could be used to pay countries like Brazil to conserve their forests and boost livestock productivity in already cleared areas,” Searchinger suggests.

‘Green’ diesel producer’s supplier linked to Amazon deforestation

Trump promised boom times for the U.S. oil industry. They're laying off staff and reducing spending instead.
When President Donald Trump took office, he promised to “unleash American energy” — and quickly left no doubt that he meant fossil fuel energy in particular.
In the months since, he has opened up vast stretches of public lands and U.S. oceans for drilling and reduced the royalty rates that companies must pay for extracting oil and gas in those areas. His administration has also proposed scrapping environmental rules requiring polluters to report their emissions to the EPA, easing regulations for oil and gas wastewater disposal, and rewriting rules to weaken risk management protocols at refineries. And by declaring a national energy emergency, Trump has cleared the way for faster permitting primarily for fossil fuel infrastructure, bringing down review timelines from multiple years to a few weeks. Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Act, quietly included billions of dollars in new federal tax breaks available to fossil fuel companies. More substantially, it dramatically scaled back federal support for wind and solar energy, as well as electric vehicles — effectively dealing a blow to the newer technologies competing with oil and gas interests.
But the boom times Trump has promised U.S. fossil fuel producers have not materialized. In fact, the industry is headed in the opposite direction: In recent months, Chevron said it would cut as much as one-fifth of its workforce, ConocoPhillips announced plans to let go of up to a quarter of its workforce by the end of the year, and Halliburton began its own round of layoffs. Across the sector, companies have also been reining in spending, cutting capital expenditures, pausing or cancelling major projects, and reducing rig counts.
“We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production at current commodity prices,” warned Travis Stice, CEO of Diamondback Energy, a Texas-based oil and gas company, in May. “Today’s prices, volatility, and macroeconomic uncertainty have put [the industry’s] progress in jeopardy.”
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, crude oil prices have dropped nearly 20 percent. That’s left prices below the roughly $65-per-barrel level where most U.S. producers can expect to break even on drilling, and they’re cutting back in anticipation of these unprofitable extraction conditions lasting into 2026. Indeed, the Energy Information Agency projects that oil prices, which currently sit at about $62 per barrel, will drop to $51 per barrel next year.
This reflects the makeup of the global oil market, which President Trump has far less control over compared to the domestic regulations he’s attacked. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, where drilling costs are among the lowest in the world, a barrel of oil costs at most $10 to extract. So when the global price of oil drops, as it has this year, American producers feel the squeeze — but national oil companies in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, continue to be profitable.
So even though President Trump has called for more drilling to lower domestic gasoline prices, American companies see little reason to pump more oil when prices are below the break-even point. The result reveals a paradox in the administration’s pursuit of what it calls “energy dominance”: It wants both lower prices and more drilling, but the former automatically discourages the latter.
“The goal of energy dominance is perhaps not fully aligned with the goal of low oil prices without significant innovation,” said Susan Bell, a senior vice president at Rystad Energy, an independent research firm, in an emailed statement. “Increasing U.S. production in a world that is oversupplied with oil in the near term would certainly drive prices down, ultimately making investment in the sector uneconomic.”
That disconnect has been on full display this year. Even as Trump promised boom times for the oil and gas industry, he has called on OPEC to increase production as a means to fulfill his promise to lower gasoline prices for Americans. In a January speech, he told OPEC to “bring down the oil price,” and in March he said that it was “very important that OPEC increase the flow of oil” in a social media post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The following month, OPEC announced it would increase production at a time when oil prices were already at a four-year low, taking industry analysts by surprise. While the move may have been an attempt to appease Trump, it was also an opportunity to assert dominance over American companies and increase the cartel’s market share. The increased production also acts as a buffer against price volatility by creating oversupply that can be tapped in times of crisis. There has been no shortage of the latter in recent years, with escalating conflict in the Middle East and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
“All this extra supply creates a cushion,” said Trey Cowan, an oil and gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which tracks the rise of renewable energy and its impact on fossil fuels. “Events like the hunting down of people in Qatar by Israel — normally, that would be a crisis situation. Oil prices would spike tremendously. And while they did surge, they came right back down.”
Trump’s tariffs haven’t helped the U.S. fossil fuel industry either. His surcharges on steel and aluminum, two metals ubiquitously used in oil and gas infrastructure, have increased the cost of production. “The cost of our largest drilling input cost, casing, has increased over 10 percent in the last quarter due to steel tariffs,” Stice, the Diamondback Energy CEO, noted in his letter to shareholders.
Cowan said that, while oil prices rise and fall periodically, the industry is facing a highly volatile market at a time when gasoline demand is poised to take a hit from the growing adoption of electric vehicles. In its drive to find new markets, the industry invested heavily in refineries producing plastics. But there, too, the industry is now facing oversupply and slim profit margins.
“You’re running out of places to use the oil, so then you’re creating an oversupply condition that’s going to continue for a longer period of time,” said Cowan. “There is some expectation that oil prices could be lower for an extended period of time.”

How low oil prices turned Trump’s call to ‘drill, baby, drill’ into a pipe dream

Republican lawmakers want to use the Congressional Review Act to permanently erase federal land use plans in Alaska — and beyond.
In the spring of 1996, lawmakers quietly buried a rider in a humdrum bill meant to make life easier for small businesses. That addition, the Congressional Review Act, granted Congress the power to kill new federal regulations with a simple majority vote. Thirty years later, Republican lawmakers are wielding it to quietly upend how the country manages public lands.
One of the act’s sponsors was Ted Stevens, an irascible Republican from Alaska. Known on Capitol Hill for his temper and the Incredible Hulk tie he sometimes wore, Stevens framed the measure, known as the CRA, as a way to reclaim legislative authority from an overreaching executive branch. Stevens soon collided with scandal: He and other Alaska politicians proudly dubbed themselves the “Corrupt Bastards Club,” after a federal investigation uncovered cash bribes and secret tapes of debauchery with oil executives. The saga exposed the sway that extractive industries hold over political decision-making — a grip soon to tighten as lawmakers use Stevens’ law to wipe out federal land-use plans nationwide.
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to overturn rules finalized in the previous 60 legislative days with a simple majority. This prevents federal agencies from ever creating similar regulations. In its first two decades, the oversight law was used just once. But when Donald Trump took office in 2017, a Republican-led Congress swiftly used the CRA to repeal 16 Obama-era regulations, ranging from environmental protections to labor and financial rules. (Congress also used it three times during President Biden’s first term.)
Now, conservatives want to use it to advance President Trump’s extraction agenda in a way that tests the bounds of the law. In July, Alaska Representative Nick Begich proposed a bill to overturn the federal management plan for 13 million acres — an area four times the size of New York — across his state’s northwest flank. The region includes land near the proposed Ambler road, which would cross 211 miles and through Gates of the Arctic National Park to mineral deposits. The plan provides environmental protections for important salmon spawning grounds, where runs have recently dwindled, and critical caribou habitat.
The move comes amid an ongoing campaign by the Trump administration to radically remake how the nation’s resources are managed. The Bureau of Land Management, for example, just announced plans to rescind a Biden-era rule that placed conservation on equal footing with other uses of federal land. It also follows nationwide outcry over a proposed giveaway of public lands; Representative Ryan Zinke, who opposed the transfer of Western lands this summer, nevertheless voted in favor of the Central Yukon’s resource management plan. (Zinke did not respond to requests for comment.)
Begich made clear that he intends to streamline development of the region. “It is federal overreach that is ensuring that Alaska’s wealth stays in the ground, unavailable to the people of one of America’s most impoverished regions,” he said on the House floor.
The Bureau of Land Management finalized Central Yukon’s latest resource management plan last year after more than a decade of extensive public engagement involving tribes, local communities, and state and federal agencies. It concluded that over 3 million acres should be considered areas of critical environmental concern, and protected. Contrary to Begich’s claims, Alaskans largely supported this decision. The process cost the federal government $6.7 million. Ignoring it, said Mollie Busby, who lives in the affected area in the small town of Wiseman, ignores the voices of those directly impacted by the plan. She worries that without the plan’s protections, the natural resources her family and neighbors depend upon will disappear. “This plan should not be overturned on a whim by Congress,” she said.
Should the legislation — which passed the House on Sept. 3 and is now before the Senate — become law, resource management plans nationwide could be at risk. Republican lawmakers have introduced bills to upend plans regulating fossil fuel and mining in the Powder River Basin in Montana, and swaths of North Dakota. “We are in uncharted territory here,” Representative Sarah Elfreth, a Democrat from Maryland, said during a House Rules Committee hearing in July. “Congress has never used the Congressional Review Act to overturn a resource management plan, or any other similar land use plan in our history.”
Because the Department of the Interior has never considered these plans eligible for review under the Act, it never submitted them to Congress. The CRA requires that before a “rule” can take effect and the 60-day look-back period begins. After the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, determined in June that the Central Yukon resource management plan qualifies as a “rule,” Congress may now rescind it. This precedent may unravel decades of land policy.. “Hundreds of resource management plans that have been finalized since 1996 will never have technically taken effect,” says Justin Meuse, government relations director for The Wilderness Society. That, he said, calls into question everything built on them — “oil and gas leases, drilling permits, rights of way, timber allotments.”
The likely result, he argued, is a cascade of uncertainty for the industries Republicans champion. “It should be scary to oil and gas companies, to anybody who farms, grazes, or uses timber on public lands,” Meuse said. A letter sent to Congress by 31 law professors concludes the move “threatens to paralyze public land management nationwide.”
This summer, the GAO also determined that the Biden’s administration’s 2022 decision to close 11 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to oil leases was subject to the CRA, opening it up to repeal. By pushing the CRA beyond its customary lookback window, lawmakers could begin unraveling hard-won protections long after they were thought secure.
Meuse called these determinations a dangerous expansion of the Congressional Review Act’s scope, one that may have sweeping implications beyond conservation. “We’re seeing the CRA being applied much, much more broadly than we ever have before,” he said. Other federal agencies — such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Transportation — could face challenges to long-standing regulations never previously treated as “rules,” potentially sparking litigation and halting years of carefully planned programs.
As the House passed Begich’s bill to repeal the Central Yukon plan in early September, Jack Reakoff watched in disbelief. A long-time Wiseman resident, he fears scuttling the plan will open the door to a transfer of federal land to the state.
The lands at stake are not empty wilderness, as they are often portrayed, but a vibrant network of rivers, migration corridors, and food for residents. They are managed for a variety of uses under federal rules that prioritize rural food security, and give those communities a voice through the Federal Subsistence Board. The 2024 Central Yukon plan maintained federal oversight over millions of acres, including federal subsistence protections for residents like Reakoff that are not allowed under the state constitution.
The use of the CRA is just one of many avenues the state is pursuing to seize control of millions of acres of federal land to benefit extractive industries. Bruce Westerman, a forester and the chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, explicitly cited the Ambler Industrial Access road as a reason to overturn the management plan. The unpopular road, which the Biden administration scuttled, would threaten North America’s largest protected region, disrupt caribou migration, and pollute waterways — while using state funds to subsidize a road that would primarily benefit mining companies.
“It is not all about Ambler and the utility corridor, but the entire district,” Reakoff says, adding that using the CRA “throws the baby out with the bathwater.” Reakoff says the state doesn’t have the resources to appropriately manage the lands it already controls, and he fears the state will open the area to ATVs that tear up fragile tundra and non-resident rifle hunting that could decimate wildlife already threatened by climate change. He’s also concerned about additional industrial traffic, and whether the state will have the budget to maintain the road.
The Busbys, meanwhile, say using the CRA ignores the voices of many small businesses that currently have federal permits to access Gates of The Arctic, plunging their operations into limbo.
Legal experts remain uncertain about the broader implications of this unprecedented move. If the bill passes the Senate, where a vote is expected this week, it’s still unclear what will replace the 2024 plan. It could potentially revert to resource management plans approved in 1986 and 1991, over the objections of six tribal councils. It’s also uncertain what the CRA’s restriction on issuing a “substantially similar” plan may mean and could make crafting a modern replacement might never be possible.
This legal ambiguity carries serious consequences for communities across Alaska. Karma Ulvi, chief of the Native Village of Eagle, said the repeal threatens the ability of tribes to have a meaningful voice in managing the lands they rely on. “It’s going to have an impact on our culture, our food sovereignty,” she said. The central Yukon salmon populations have already crashed, she says, and mining or additional infrastructure could harm their chances of recovery. “Our Congressmen need to consult with the tribes, and ask how this could impact us,” she says. “I’m really afraid that the priorities now are just extraction and money.”

Republicans are using an arcane oversight rule to permanently dismantle federal land protections

Campaigns and activists are racing to educate voters on the Public Service Commission, elected officials with power over energy bills and climate action.
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.
While any election brings ads, events, door-knocking, and other efforts to remind people to get to the polls, this year campaign workers concerned with Georgia’s Public Service Commission races have another hurdle: education.
Climate and environment organizers gathered in Atlanta recently to strategize about how to mobilize voters ahead of November’s election for two seats on the Georgia PSC. Dubbed “Watts at Stake,” the event brought together organizers, community leaders, and influencers to hear about the importance of the somewhat obscure state agency — a message the speakers view as critical this election cycle.
“If you ask most people, they don’t know what the PSC is,” Russell Armstrong with Black Futures Lab, a group focused on leveraging Black electoral power, told Grist.
But, Armstrong and others said, voters care about what the PSC does, once they understand it.
The commission regulates utilities in Georgia, including overseeing Georgia Power’s plans and rates — and power bills are climbing. That motivates voters, according to strategists across the political spectrum.
“That’s a galvanizing, dare I say energizing, message that will get Georgia voters out,” said Carmen Bergman, an advisor to incumbent Republican commissioner Fitz Johnson’s campaign.
Experts and advocates elsewhere are also invested in the Georgia PSC because while power bills are going up nationwide, Georgia is one of only ten states that directly elects the utility commissioners who have final say over electricity rates.
“There actually is more power for the consumer in a state like Georgia than in any other state because they vote for their regulators,” Charles Hua, founder of the utility advocacy and education group PowerLines, told reporters ahead of last weekend’s organizing event. “The challenge is how do we get that education and awareness in front of as many folks as possible?”
One of the biggest jobs for the Georgia PSC is regulating Georgia Power. That includes how power is made — which has an impact on climate change because power plants are a major source of emissions — and how much energy costs, which affects the millions of Georgians who get their electricity from the company.
There are five statewide elected commissioners who serve staggered terms. Currently they are all Republicans. This year, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson are up for election. Johnson is running against Democrat Peter Hubbard and Echols is facing Democrat Alicia Johnson.
Helping voters make the connection between their power bills and the two seats on the ballot this year is proving to be an all-out, statewide effort. Groups like Georgia Conservation Voters, one of the organizers of last weekend’s summit, said they are holding both virtual and in-person town halls to educate voters. Black Futures Lab has volunteers knocking on doors and is holding a series of events in South Georgia.
“The main thing is showing people that, hey, we hold the power, we hold the keys to this election and every other election from here to come,” said Omega Calhoun, who spearheads their efforts in Valdosta.
Bergman said the Johnson campaign is taking an “all of the above” approach to getting the word out, including events, canvassing, and ads.
“There’s going to be no stone left unturned to make sure voters know that there is a difference on the ballot,” she said.
This kind of effort is pretty novel for a down-ballot race in Georgia, according to Georgia State University public policy professor Tammy Greer. Voters would benefit from more education and engagement in other races, too, she said, including lieutenant governor and the commissioners of insurance, labor, and agriculture.
“These spaces have so much policy implications over people in the state that we really don’t pay attention to,” Greer said. “If we paid closer attention to their platforms then perhaps we can start electing individuals that are looking out for all of our best interests.”
This is also an unusual year for a typically low-profile election because the PSC seats are the only statewide races on the ballot, but there are local elections in some of the major cities, including Atlanta. So while Georgia’s Republican-leaning rural areas often carry state elections, without a governor’s race or even mayoral race to get many rural voters to the polls, Greer said, Democratic voters in cities could decide the PSC races.
“And I think that the folks on the commission understand that,” Greer said. “They understand the tide is changing.”
She pointed to the PSC’s unanimous vote earlier this year to temporarily freeze power rates as a sign the five current commissioners know that high power bills are driving voters and that what Greer called “a bit of dissent” could soon join the currently all-Republican commission.

How to get Georgia voters to turn out for the PSC election? Talk about their power bills.

The unprecedented deal the Shoshone-Paiute struck with a Canadian gold company will test whether mining can align with Indigenous rights.
In 2020, when Brian Mason began his first term as Chairman for the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation, gold miners came calling. Just a few years before, Integra Resources, a Canadian mining company, had acquired an abandoned gold and silver mine on the tribe’s homelands in southwestern Idaho, but before work began, they had an unusual request: could the tribe and the company establish a partnership that would benefit both?
“There are a lot of things that were different as we started to work with Integra,” Mason said. Early efforts included invitations to tribal members to the mine while impact studies were conducted as well as initial site surveys.
Historically, mining has been ecologically costly and even deadly to Indigenous peoples around the world. The industry is also notorious for ignoring meaningful consultation with Indigenous communities and outright ignoring human rights. Even in the United States, mining companies have often operated with carte blanche in Indian Country.
Last month, for instance, the Nez Perce Tribe, located north of Duck Valley in Idaho, sued the Forest Service for approving an open-pit gold mine that the tribe says will pose cultural and ecological risks to their homelands. In Arizona, a proposed copper mine on Oak Flat, a sacred site, has been in and out of court since 2014 and ongoing resistance has led President Donald Trump to call tribal members who are against the mine “anti-American”.
For Duck Valley, the question was: how do you draw up an agreement that benefits the tribe with an industry that has thrived on theft and dispossession? The answer was surprisingly simple: include the nation as development partners in a framework that recognizes tribal sovereignty and self-determination.
Mining operations, and most especially projects connected to transition minerals, become more expensive when companies mine in Indigenous territories without working with Indigenous peoples. In 2023, a federal judge ruled that Enel Green Power, a wind turbine developer, trespassed on Osage Nation lands when it built a wind farm, creating a legal precedent that has shifted the way developers navigate projects and made meaningful tribal consultation a cost-cutting measure for businesses.
“We don’t do this as an ideological sort of effort,” said Mark Stockton, Integra’s vice president of sustainability, with regards to the Duck Valley deal. “It creates resilience in our business. It creates predictability and durability.”
Last month, the Shoshone-Paiute and Integra signed a legally binding agreement to develop and oversee the gold and silver mining project, sharing profits and establishing, within the decade-long timeline of the mine’s active operations, initiatives that will support the tribe’s economic development and language revitalization efforts. But what makes the agreement stand apart from others is its commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, an international standard for the rights of Indigenous peoples. While other projects, such as the Anahola Solar Project in Hawaii, coordinated a partnership with Indigenous Hawaiians under an UNDRIP-style framework, Integra says its agreement with Duck Valley is a first in the Lower 48.
Maranda Compton, the Founder of Lepwe, an organization that consults tribes and developers in sectors such as mining, focuses on agreements and publishing guidelines that benefit tribes in other sectors through UNDRIP. “My joke is always that consultation is basically the federal government coming to a tribe and saying, How much do you hate this project on a scale from one to you’re going to sue us?”
Compton co-authored a white paper earlier this year with the Tallgrass Institute, an organization focused on Indigenous economic stewardship, detailing the way industries are shifting to respect UNDRIP and pursue coordination with tribal nations, a move that includes developers engaging in revenue sharing and continuous oversight over projects with tribes.
Chairman Mason says the demand for metals and minerals has a big impact on his tribe, especially in the neighboring state of Nevada, where Shoshone-Paiute lands are also located. “If Nevada were its own country, it’d be the fourth-largest gold producer in the world,” he said. But the state’s also been embroiled in multiple disputes with tribal nations, notably, the Thacker Pass mine project, the largest known deposit of lithium, a mineral used for electric vehicles and a sacred site for tribes, including the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and Summit Lake Paiute. Beyond a lack of meaningful tribal consultation to mine Thacker Pass, generating an international rights violation report by Human Rights Watch, Mason noted there are no profit-sharing agreements in place and none have been proposed. On top of that, federal mining law allows companies to claim land cheaply while avoiding payments on royalties for use of that land.
“The tribes have never been subject to any of that revenue,” said Mason. “We’ve argued with the U.S. government on that, we’ve argued with the state about it, trying to get some revenue to the tribes in some form of a mineral tax.”
But many tribes in the region, including the Shoshone-Paiute, are known as “non-revenue” tribes: a tribal nation with an economy solely supported by grants and federal funding. For the Shoshone-Paiute, that has meant 85 to 90 percent of all revenue comes from federal sources. But because funding is contingent on available funding, non-revenue tribal economies are often unstable.
Tribal nations receive federal assistance as a result of signing treaties with the United States. In exchange for large swaths of land, the federal government agreed to provide support to said tribes. However, in a report released by the Government Accountability Office last year, auditors found that it was unclear how much of the $32.6 billion in tribal funding and assistance actually went to tribes. That funding is also expected to decrease. In a 2026 budget request to Congress, the Trump administration has proposed cutting funding to the Bureau of Indian Affairs by $617 million.
According to Arnold Thomas, the tribe’s Vice Chairman, the tribe’s economy, alongside other tribes in Nevada, has always struggled. By bringing in revenue from mining and gaming, Arnold believes this will move the tribe to “becoming self-sufficient and exercising their sovereignty.”
While details of the agreement are confidential, the tribe says that they wouldn’t participate if the revenue wouldn’t have been enough to fund their projects. Now on the horizon: a tribal healthcare system and language revitalization efforts to stem the loss of fluent speakers. “The funding will assist us,” said Thomas, “enhancing our teaching modalities, infrastructure, and medical needs.”
“I hope folks view this as not the gold standard, but the new standard,” said Compton.

How a profit-sharing agreement could be a new model for mining on Indigenous land

A report finds that President Trump’s flagship legislation will grant $40 billion in new subsidies to the oil and gas industry over the next decade.
This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the U.S. will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at at least $34.8 billion a year.
The increase amounts to “the largest single-year increase in subsidies we’ve seen in many years — at least since 2017,” says Collin Rees, the U.S. program manager for Oil Change International, an anti-fossil fuels advocacy organization and author of the report.
The U.S. has been subsidizing fossil fuel production for more than a century. Many of the tax subsidies logged in the report — including a tax break passed in 1913 that allows companies to write off large amounts of expenses related to drilling new oil wells — have been on the books for decades.
Fossil fuel subsidies have proven notoriously difficult to undo, even with a determined administration. After campaigning on ending tax breaks for Big Oil, President Joe Biden’s 2021 budget pledged to raise $35 billion over 19 years by eliminating certain fossil fuel subsidies; one of his first executive orders tasked agencies with getting rid of those subsidies. (“I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to Big Oil,” he said at a press conference announcing the order.)
But the phaseouts of these subsidies were nixed during climate legislation negotiations with then-senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who was the key swing vote in the Senate at the time and a recipient of fossil fuel money with lengthy ties to the coal industry. Meanwhile, the Inflation Reduction Act — the resulting compromise between Manchin and Democratic leadership, which was passed in August of 2022 — gave additional boosts to the fossil fuel industry in the form of subsidies for oil-and-gas-friendly technologies, like carbon capture and storage and certain types of hydrogen made with natural gas.
“What happens is you have these policies in place, and then you have a constituency that strongly advocates and lobbies for them, it becomes harder and harder to unwind them, which I think is the situation that we’re in today,” says Matthew Kotchen, a professor of economics at Yale University, who was not involved in the new analysis.
That cycle is continuing in the new administration. Fossil fuel companies spent millions of dollars getting Trump elected last year; one report from the advocacy group Climate Power puts the total number at $445 million. Those companies are seeing benefits as the administration pursues an aggressive deregulatory agenda, hobbles renewable energy projects, and downplays the importance of climate change. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the president has taken to calling oil CEOs following their appearances on TV.
“It’s no secret that Trump and the Republicans are on the side of the fossil fuel industry and very much vice versa,” says Rees. “The fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting Republicans and Trump elected. They then presented their wish lists. Nearly everything on those wish lists was fulfilled, and in fact, they got a bunch of additional goodies that weren’t even in those wish lists.”
The new research builds on past work from Oil Change International, which last did the math on national fossil fuel subsidies in 2017, finding then that $20 billion was going out the door to the industry each year. To compile the new report, Rees and his colleagues combed through a variety of federal governmental sources on the amount of money going to the oil, gas, and coal industries each year.
The question of what, exactly, constitutes a federal subsidy is the topic of some debate. Environmental groups tend to have a broader scope in tallying up public money spent on fossil fuels, including federal money not distributed directly to oil companies. Conservative groups, meanwhile, take a much narrower approach. (For its report, Oil Change International used the definitions of subsidies set by the World Trade Organization in calculating domestic funding to fossil fuels.)
Due to a lack of transparency across the federal government, the calculations in this report are “likely to be an undercount,” Rees says. “There’s probably some things that we missed — some corners of the budget that are funding fossil fuels in different ways.”
The $4 billion in new yearly subsidies comes largely in the form of allocations contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed this summer. One of the biggest new subsidies — an expansion of the tax credit for carbon capture and storage — is, ironically, related to provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Trump campaigned on reversing. (The One Big Beautiful Bill Act did, however, crack down harshly on tax credits for wind and solar, carrying out part of Trump’s campaign promise.)
Carbon capture and storage is the process of capturing CO2 emissions and injecting them deep underground. The oil and gas industry has for decades injected CO2 underground to help recover difficult reserves that don’t respond well to traditional drilling methods. Environmentalists have long argued that the logic of replicating an oil and gas technique as a climate solution is seriously flawed — especially considering that a company could reap a climate tax credit from injecting CO2 that will then be used to create more fossil fuels.
In the original Inflation Reduction Act, which significantly expanded the existing carbon capture tax credit, there was a price differential baked into the tax credits: Producers got more money per ton of CO2 they sequestered underground without any oil production involved, and less for CO2 used specifically to produce more oil and gas. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated this differential, allowing producers to collect on the full credit even if they are using CO2 to produce more fossil fuels. The total expansion of tax credits for carbon capture in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the analysis found, could send out more than $1.4 billion of public money to oil and gas companies each year.
The types of federal subsidies addressed in this report are just one kind of boost the government gives dirty industries. The analysis does not address state and local tax breaks for fossil fuel companies, nor does it add up international financing from publicly funded U.S. entities to overseas fossil fuel companies and projects. (Just before he left office, President Biden backed a limit on funding for dirty investments made by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a part of the executive branch that facilitates the export of U.S. goods and services. President Trump promptly encouraged the Bank in April to resume funding for coal projects abroad.)
The fossil fuel industry also benefits financially from not having to address the negative side effects of their products: Coal companies don’t have to deal with the health impacts from people breathing polluted air, for example, while oil and gas companies don’t need to think about damages from extreme weather juiced up by climate change caused by their product. Kotchen, the Yale economist, calculated in a 2021 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that a small handful of U.S. oil, gas, coal, and diesel giants, by not having to pay for the damage they cause, get $62 billion in what he calls “implicit subsidies” per year.
I asked him if, given the major environmental rollbacks overseen by the Trump administration, he’d expect that figure to increase if he redid his analysis in 2025. “The environmental externalities are higher, and production has gone up,” he says. “I think [the number] would be a lot higher.”

US taxpayers will pay billions in new fossil fuel subsidies thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill

The 1.6-megawatt pilot system is among a growing number of initiatives to put solar over waterways. The approach could generate gigawatts of power nationwide.
This story was originally published by Canary Media.
A novel solar power project just went online in California’s Central Valley, with panels that span across canals in the vast agricultural region.
The 1.6-megawatt installation, called Project Nexus, was fully completed late last month. The $20 million state-funded pilot has turned stretches of the Turlock Irrigation District’s canals into hubs of clean electricity generation in a remote area where cotton, tomatoes, almonds, and hundreds of other crops are grown.
Project Nexus is only the second canal-based solar array to operate in the United States — and one of just a handful in the world. America’s first solar-canal project started producing power in October 2024 for the Pima and Maricopa tribes, known together as the Gila River Indian Community, on their reservation near Phoenix, Arizona. Two more canal-top arrays are already in the works there.
In California, the solar-canal system was built in two phases, with a 20-foot-wide stretch completed in March and a roughly 110-foot-wide portion finished at the end of August. Researchers will study the project’s performance over time, while a new initiative led by California universities and the company Solar Aquagrid will push to fast-track the deployment of solar canals across the state.
Proponents of this emerging approach say it can provide overlapping benefits.
Early research suggests that, along with producing power in land-constrained areas, putting solar arrays above water can help keep panels cool, in turn improving their efficiency and electricity output. Shade from the panels can also prevent water loss through evaporation in drought-prone regions and can limit algae growth in waterways.
Plus, solar canals could offer a faster path to clean energy development than utility-scale solar farms, especially in rural parts of the U.S. where big renewables projects increasingly face community opposition. Placing solar panels atop existing infrastructure doesn’t require altering the landscape, and the relatively small installations can be plugged into nearby distribution lines, avoiding the cumbersome process of connecting to the higher-voltage wires required for bigger undertakings.
“Why disturb land that has sacred value when we could just put the solar panels over a canal and generate more efficient power?” said David DeJong, director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, which is developing a water delivery system for the Gila River Indian Community.
The purpose of these early arrays is primarily to power on-site canal equipment like pumps and gates. But such projects could eventually help clean up the larger grid, too. A coalition of U.S. environmental groups previously estimated that putting panels over 8,000 miles of federally owned canals and aqueducts could generate over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy — enough to power nearly 20 million homes — and reduce water evaporation by possibly tens of billions of gallons.
Still, the technology isn’t an obvious choice for many canal operators.
Elevating solar panels over canals is more expensive and technically complex than installing conventional ground-mounted solar arrays on trackers, and it can involve using more concrete and steel. Wider canals may also require support structures for panels within the waterway, which can disrupt the flow of water.
Earlier this year, a senior engineer at Arizona’s Salt River Project recommended that the power and water utility not pursue a solar-canal pilot ​“based on cost estimates and project concerns,” after comparing the unique design to both rooftop and utility-scale solar alternatives.
Solar-canal developers are hoping they can still gain a toehold in irrigation districts that are grappling with high electricity costs and have limited options for generating cheap power, said Ben Lepley, the founder of engineering firm Tectonicus, which designed the Gila River Indian Community’s 1.3-megawatt system south of Phoenix.
The initial costs are ​“definitely higher … but it can actually be really fast as a project,” Lepley said. ​“By the next year, you can have really cheap electricity, and that gives [irrigation districts] stability over the 30-year life of the project.”
For its part, the Gila River Indian Community is building solar-canal projects as part of its broader mission to ​“generate enough renewable energy to completely offset the electrical use by the irrigation district,” said DeJong. He noted the district pays about $3 million a year for the 27 million kilowatt-hours of electricity it needs to pump, move, and store water.
The community built its first solar-canal project over the Casa Blanca Canal with a nearly $5.7 million grant provided by the Inflation Reduction Act — part of a $25 million provision that supplied funding for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to design, study, and deploy projects that put panels over waterways. Irrigation districts in California, Oregon, and Utah received the remaining funds to develop their own installations.
The Trump administration is unlikely to support future programs, given its focus on gutting clean energy incentives, but a handful of projects are already moving forward without such grants.
DeJong said that construction is 90 percent complete on the tribal community’s second solar-canal project, a nearly 0.9-megawatt array built in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is slated to go online later this year. The community is self-funding a similar-sized project over the Santan Canal and is developing a floating solar array on one of its reservoirs, with both systems set to be up and running by early 2026. All told, the installations will provide 4 megawatts in local clean energy generation, he said.
“We have become really familiar with the economics of building these [canal] projects,” said Lepley, whose firm also worked on the Gila River Indian Community’s second and third solar-canal systems. ​“We have a pretty good playbook of how to continue these projects going forward, even without any grant funding from the federal government.”

California’s first solar-covered canal is now fully online

A sci-fi idea is gaining supporters, from billionaires to city councils. Whether it's feasible is another matter.
The companies frantically building and leasing data centers are well aware that they’re straining grids, driving emissions, and guzzling water. The electricity demand of AI data centers in particular could increase as much as 165 percent by 2030. Over half of the energy powering these sprawling facilities comes from fossil fuels, threatening to reverse progress toward addressing the climate crisis.
Some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence say they have a solution: Just stick these colossal computer clusters in space. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told manosphere podcaster Theo Vonn that he considers a massive expansion of data centers inevitable. “I do guess a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” he said. (This is not, in fact, inevitable, but the result of unfathomably wealthy companies choosing to invest unfathomably large sums of money. Altman has speculated that he would quite literally put trillions into it, and OpenAI is part of the consortium behind the $500 billion Stargate project.)
Altman is aware, however, that some people might not like this. “I’ve spoken with environmentalists,” he said. Then, he offered a suggestion. “Maybe we put [ data centers] in space,” he said. “I wish I had, like, more concrete answers for you, but like, we’re stumbling through this.”
Now, the idea of hurling data centers, the largest of which can cover over a million square feet, into orbit may seem impractical. But Altman’s not alone in considering it. Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt are also betting on the idea.
Altman has proposed creating a Dyson sphere of data centers around the sun, referring to a hypothetical megastructure built around a star to capture much of its energy. The rather glaring downside to this is that building it would likely require more resources than exist on Earth, and could make the planet uninhabitable. But somewhat more realistic plans are inching closer to reality. Startups like Starcloud, Axiom, and Lonestar Data Systems have raised millions to develop them.
There are at least 5,400 data centers in the United States, ranging from micro-size to thousand-server “hyperscalers,” and the number is growing fast. These facilities are expected to consume up to 12 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2028. Putting them in space, then, can seem like a panacea: solving the energy-use problem with 24/7 solar power, and freeing communities from the burden of air, noise, and water pollution.
There’s some real science behind this. Ali Hajimiri, an electrical engineer and professor with Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, sought a patent for a “massively parallel computational system in space” — as in, a data center — back in 2016. Since then, launch costs have gone down (to around $1,500 per kilogram, by one estimate) and solar panels have gotten lighter and more efficient. Hajimiri and his colleagues recently proposed a lightweight space-based solar power system that could generate electricity at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, significantly cheaper at scale than comparable systems here on Earth. Such technology theoretically could power orbital data centers like those Altman imagines, though Hajimiri is still not sure when they could be built at the kind of scale companies like OpenAI demand. “I never want to say something cannot be done,” he said. “But there are challenges associated with it.”
For one thing, the systems he imagines process data relatively slowly compared to those on terra firma. They’d be constantly bombarded by radiation, and “obsolescence would be a problem” because making repairs or upgrades would be confoundingly difficult. Hajimiri believes that data centers in space could, someday, be a viable solution but hesitates to say when that day might come. “Definitely it would be doable in a few years,” he said. “The question is how effective they would be, and how cost-effective they would become.”
The idea of simply putting data centers in orbit is not limited to the off-hand musings of techies or the deeper thought of academics. Even some elected officials in cities where companies like Amazon hope to build data centers are raising the point. Tucson, Arizona, councilmember Nikki Lee waxed poetic about their potential during an August hearing, in which the council unanimously voted down a proposed data center in their city.
“A lot of people are saying data centers don’t belong in the desert,” Lee said. But “if this is truly a national priority,” then the focus must be on “putting federal research and development dollars into looking at data centers that will exist in space. And that may sound wild to you all and a little science fiction, but it’s actually happening.”
That’s true, but it’s happening on an experimental scale, not an industrial one. A startup called Starcloud hoped to launch a refrigerator-sized satellite housing a few Nvidia chips in August, but the launch date was pushed back. Lonestar Data Systems landed a miniature data center, carrying precious information like an Imagine Dragons song, on the moon a few months ago, though the lander tipped over and died in the attempt. More such launches are planned for the coming months. But it’s “very hard to predict how quickly this idea will become economically feasible,” said Matthew Weinzierl, a Harvard University economist who studies market forces in space. “Space-based data centers may well have some niche uses, such as for processing space-based data and providing national security capabilities,” he said. “To be a meaningful rival to terrestrial centers, however, they will need to compete on cost and service quality like anything else.”
For now, it’s much more expensive to put a data center in space than it is to put one in, say, Virginia’s Data Center Valley, where power demand could double in the next decade if left unregulated. And as long as staying on Earth remains cheaper, profit-motivated companies will favor terrestrial data-center expansion.
Still, there is one factor that might encourage OpenAI and others to look toward the heavens: There isn’t much regulation up there. Building data centers on Earth requires obtaining municipal permits, and companies can be stymied by local governments whose residents worry that data center development might siphon their water, raise their electricity bills, or overheat their planet. In space, there aren’t any neighbors to complain, said Michelle Hanlon, a political scientist and lawyer who leads the Center for Air and Space law at the University of Mississippi. “If you are a U.S. company seeking to put data centers in space, then the sooner the better, before Congress is like, ‘Oh, we need to regulate that.’”

Data centers gobble Earth’s resources. What if we took them to space instead?

The continent’s 54 nations outline a bold vision for climate action and pledges to present a unified position at the global meeting later this year.
After three days of talks in Addis Ababa, African leaders have agreed on Wednesday to a common climate roadmap ahead of COP30 in Brazil. Their bold vision presents Africa as a “continent of solutions” and pledges to present a unified position to developed nations at the global negotiations later this year.
Africa is slated to be home to one-fifth of the world’s population by 2030. But it only produces a small fraction — currently about 3 percent — of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and accounts for just 6 percent of energy use. Against that backdrop, the summit’s declaration made climate adaptation, justice, and energy access pillars of its platform.
”It’s inspiring to see Africa leaping forward with clarity, purpose, and determination,” said Mohammed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, a think tank focused on climate action. ”Africa is claiming its rightful space in the climate dialogue.”
This was the second Africa Climate Summit, with the first held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2023. This year’s event established, expanded, or reaffirmed ambitious targets. The 54-nation group called for tens of billions in new investment from within the continent and abroad, and set a target of 300 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030.
“Definitely it is a wish list,” said Omar Elmawi, with the civil society group Africa Movement of Movements. Getting more money from developed countries won’t be easy — according to the declaration, Africa has $84 billion a year in adaptation needs alone, yet only received $14 billion in 2021 and 2022. But the hope is that a more unified position at COP will amplify those requests.
Regardless, both Elmawi and Adow noted that Africa can progress toward the summit’s goals on its own too. Governments could, for instance, dedicate portions of their budgets to climate priorities to show that Africa is, as Elmawi phrased it, “putting our money where our mouth is.”
Ethiopia hosted what amounted to an African mini-COP the same week that the country inaugurated a massive, and contentious, hydroelectric dam on the Nile river, which at 5 gigawatts is now Africa’s largest. The country also announced a bid to host COP32 in 2027, pitting it against Nigeria, among others. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed also used the occasion to announce a goal of raising $50 billion a year for climate solutions, though it was unclear exactly where the money would come from.
“Only bold, united, and sustained collaboration can avert climate catastrophe,” Abiy said at Monday’s opening ceremony, where he set a goal of spurring 1,000 African climate solutions by 2030.
The summit’s final declaration also highlighted the Green Minerals Strategy that Africa adopted earlier this year. It is a coalition aimed at leveraging the continent’s vast deposits of critical minerals — the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, holds most of the world’s cobalt — as part of a green transition. “You can think of these as homegrown solutions to a climate problem that was largely caused by the rest of the world,” said Adow.
Still, some saw problems with the summit’s outcomes. For one, leaders recognized “the role of transitional energy sources in ensuring a just transition,” Elmawi said. To him, that likely meant relying on methane, also known as natural gas, which often requires building infrastructure that can last decades. He worries this “loophole” will lead governments and companies “to continue pushing and preaching fossil fuel.”
The declaration also specifically welcomes the use of carbon markets in Africa. They are essentially systems in which polluting countries can offset their emissions by trading carbon credits with developed nations. This has led to controversial exchanges, such as Zimbabwe signing away nearly 20 percent of its land to a company based in the United Arab Emirates.
What isn’t debatable, however, is that Africa has made its position clear heading into COP30. “This represents a very decisive moment for the continent,” said Adow. “Africa has shown that it’s moving from the margins of global climate decision-making to the center.”

Audio Catalogue.

Listen to the stories from My Project Name

https://grist.org

This new machine churns out carbon-storing biochar on the cheap

September 17, 2025