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    Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star.

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    Growing worldwide energy demand and other factors have shifted the calculus, but hurdles still lie ahead.For years at global climate summits, nuclear energy was seen by many as part of the problem, not part of the solution.Sama Bilbao y Leon has been attending the annual United Nations climate change talks since 1999, when she was a student of nuclear engineering. And for most of that time, she said, people didn’t want to discuss nuclear power at all.“We had antinuclear groups saying, ‘What are you doing here? Leave!’” she said.These days, it’s a very different story.At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged, for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by midcentury to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge.“It’s a whole different dynamic today,” said Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. “A lot more people are open to talking about nuclear power as a solution.”The list of countries pledging to build new nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity without emitting any planet-warming greenhouse gases, includes longtime users of the technology like Canada, France, South Korea and the United States. But it also includes countries that don’t currently have any nuclear capacity, like Kenya, Mongolia and Nigeria.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Exxon Chief to Trump: Don’t Withdraw From Paris Climate Deal

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      Darren Woods was one of only a few Western oil executives attending a global climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, cautioned President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday against withdrawing from the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, saying Mr. Trump risked leaving a void at the negotiating table.Mr. Woods, speaking at an annual U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, described climate negotiations as opportunities for Mr. Trump to pursue common-sense policymaking.“We need a global system for managing global emissions,” Mr. Woods said in an interview with The New York Times in Baku. “Trump and his administrations have talked about coming back into government and bringing common sense back into government. I think he could take the same approach in this space.”Mr. Woods also urged government officials to create incentives for companies to transition to cleaner forms of energy in a profitable way.“The government role is extremely important and one that they haven’t been successfully fulfilling, quite frankly,” he said.Mr. Woods’s presence in a stadium teeming with diplomats is all the more noteworthy because of who is not here in Azerbaijan, a petrostate on the Caspian Sea that was once part of the Soviet Union. Many heads of state, including President Biden, have taken a pass, as have the leaders of several big oil companies like Shell and Chevron.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Tiny Panel, Up for Election, Could Steer Arizona Away From Clean Power

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      The vote, in a sunny state with huge solar potential, reflects a growing nationwide fight over America’s energy transition.As Arizona voters go the polls, they have more control over their state’s power plants and climate policies than they might realize.This year three of the five seats are up for grabs on the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates electric utilities. The commission has authority over how electricity is generated, among other things, and what customers pay.In recent years, it has taken steps toward rolling back a clean-energy mandate passed by a previous Republican-led board. It has also made it harder to build community solar in a state renowned for its sunniness, its critics say, and easier to build new fossil-fuel-burning power plants.These boards exist in states nationwide, and while most are appointed, similarly contentious races playing out in states like Louisiana and Montana, where they’re debating the future of coal power, which is particularly dirty, and what role natural gas, another fossil fuel, should have.“It’s a fourth branch of government that nobody knows about who’s in your pocket every day,” said Robert Burns, a Republican who served on Arizona’s commission for eight years.Starting two decades ago, the Republican-controlled commission had encouraged a transition to renewable energy based on simple economics: Renewables were getting cheaper than fossil fuels. It initially required utilities it regulates to become 15-percent renewable by 2025 and later, during Mr. Burns’s tenure, he sought to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants by 2050.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.N. Report on Climate Goals Says Countries Have Made No Progress

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      An annual assessment by the world body tracks the gulf between what countries have vowed to do and what they’ve actually achieved.One year after world leaders made a landmark promise to move away from fossil fuels, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming, according to a United Nations report issued on Thursday.Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year and are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, the report found. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks unlikely that countries will be able to limit global warming to the levels they agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.“Another year passed without action means we’re worse off,” said Anne Olhoff, a climate policy expert based in Denmark and a co-author of the assessment, known as the Emissions Gap Report.The report comes a month before diplomats from around the world are scheduled to meet in Baku, Azerbaijan, for annual United Nations climate talks, where countries will discuss how they might step up efforts to address global warming.Lately, those efforts have faced huge obstacles.Even though renewable energy sources like wind and solar are growing rapidly around the world, demand for electricity has been rising even faster, which means countries are still burning more fossil fuels each year. Geopolitical conflicts, from the U.S.-China rivalry to war in places like Ukraine and Gaza, have made international cooperation on climate change harder. And rich countries have failed to keep their financial promises to help poor countries shift away from oil, gas and coal.At last year’s climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, representatives from nearly every nation approved a pact that called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” and accelerating climate action this decade. But the agreement was vague on how to do so and on which countries should do what, and so far there has been little follow-through.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fears of a Global Oil Shock if the Mideast Crisis Intensifies

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      The threat of an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has created an “extraordinarily precarious” global situation, sowing alarm about the potential economic fallout.As the world absorbs the prospect of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, the potential economic fallout is sowing increasing alarm. The worst fears center on a broadly debilitating development: a shock to the global oil supply.Such a result, actively contemplated in world capitals, could yield surging prices for gasoline, fuel and other products made with petroleum like plastics, chemicals and fertilizer. It could discourage investment, hiring, and business expansion, threatening many economies — particularly in Europe — with the risk of recession. The effects would be potent in nations that depend on imported oil, especially poor countries in Africa.The possibility of this calamitous outcome has come into focus in recent days as Israel plots its response to the barrage of missiles that Iran unleashed last week. Some scenarios are seen as highly unlikely, yet still conceivable: An Israeli strike on Iranian oil installations might prompt Iran to target refineries in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, both major oil producers. Iranian-supported Houthi rebels claimed credit for an attack on Saudi oil installations in 2019. The Trump administration subsequently pinned the blame on Iranian forces.As it has done before, Iran might also threaten the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that is the conduit for oil produced in the Persian Gulf, the source of nearly one-third of the world’s oil production. Such a move could entail conflict with American naval ships stationed in the region.That, too, is currently considered to be improbable. But the upheaval in the region in recent months has pushed out the parameters of possibility, rendering imaginable scenarios that were once dismissed as extreme.As Israel plots its next move, it has other targets besides Iranian oil installations. Iran would have reason for caution in crafting its own retaliation. Broadening the war to its Persian Gulf neighbors would invite a punishing response that could push Iran’s own economy — already bleak — to the brink of collapse.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Across the World, Diplomats Gird for a Trump Assault on Climate Action

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      Some leaders insist that the global clean energy transition will happen with or without the United States.Climate negotiators from Europe, Latin America and some island nations are bracing for the potential return to the world stage of Donald J. Trump, who withdrew the United States from the fight against global warming during his first term.Nations will press forward without the United States if they must, according to climate negotiators who gathered in New York last week during the United Nations General Assembly. But the first Trump presidency was a setback in the climate fight, and a repeat would slow things down at a critical point when scientists say efforts need to speed up.“I don’t want this to happen, of course,” said Laurence Tubiana, who served as France’s climate ambassador during the creation of the 2015 Paris agreement, referring to a potential Trump victory. “But I think there will be a sentiment that we have to double down on the Paris agreement framework. I think everybody’s preparing for that.”The night before Donald J. Trump won the presidency in 2016, an adviser to developing nations in global climate negotiations declared, “No one believes Trump can win, so no real Plan B here!”After he beat Hillary Clinton to win the White House, Mr. Trump kept the world guessing for months about whether the United States would remain a global partner on climate change. Many leaders reserved early judgment, hopeful that people like Mr. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, would convince him to stay in. They didn’t.Mr. Trump, who has dismissed global warming as a “hoax,” made the United States the first and only country to withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement that calls on countries to cut the pollution from oil, gas and coal that is dangerously heating the planet. The Trump administration also worked with major oil producers like Saudi Arabia to weaken global pledges around fossil fuels. President Biden rejoined the Paris agreement on his first day in office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Texas Power Grid Faces New Strains, Renewables Help Meet Demand

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      Texas, the biggest oil-producing state, has turned to solar power and battery storage to see it through extreme weather. But with demand rising, much more power will be needed.During the scorching summer of 2023, the Texas energy grid wobbled as surging demand for electricity threatened to exceed supply. Several times, officials called on residents to conserve energy to avoid a grid failure.This year it turned out much better — thanks in large part to more renewable energy.The electrical grid in Texas has breezed through a summer in which, despite milder temperatures, the state again reached record levels of energy demand. It did so largely thanks to the substantial expansion of new solar farms.And the grid held strong even during the critical early evening hours — when the sun goes down and the nighttime winds have yet to pick up — with the help of an even newer source of energy in Texas and around the country: batteries.The federal government expects the amount of battery storage capacity across the country, almost nonexistent five years ago, to nearly double by the end of the year. Texas, which has already surpassed California in the amount of power coming from large-scale solar farms, was expected to gain on its West Coast rival in battery storage as well.The swift growth of battery storage as a source of power for the electric grid, along with the continued expansion of large-scale solar farms, could not have come at a better time. Texas, like many other states, is facing a surge in its power needs from data centers, new manufacturing plants, cryptocurrency mines, growing residential demand and increasingly intense summer heat. Officials estimate that Texas, already the nation’s largest electricity consumer, could roughly double its demand in just a few years.“Every state is going to go through this. Texas just happens to be the farthest along because we are growing our energy usage first,” said Michael Lee, the chief executive of Octopus Energy U.S., a subsidiary of the British electricity provider. “We’re seeing this in every other state, and all over the world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Trump and Harris Talked About Climate Change During the Debate

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      At the tail end of the hottest summer in recorded history, as wildfires tear through California and a hurricane heads toward Louisiana, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump failed to say how they would fight climate change during their debate Tuesday night.It was the final question posed during the 90 minute exchange, about an issue that moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News noted was “important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters.”The outcome of this presidential election could be critical to determining whether the United States, the world’s biggest historic source of the greenhouse gasses that are dangerously warming the planet, cuts its pollution enough to keep global warming within relatively safe limits. Scientists say the window for action is rapidly closing.Ms. Harris acknowledged the problem, noting “the former president has said that climate change is a hoax and what we know is that it is very real.”“We know that we can actually deal with this issue,” she said, but did not offer any specifics about how she would. Instead, Ms. Harris made a largely economic argument, noting that federal subsidies for clean energy, which includes wind and solar power, have created new jobs and spurred manufacturing.And, in an unusual turn, Ms. Harris boasted that under the Biden administration, gas production has reached record highs. It’s a point that until very recently the administration had been reluctant to emphasize. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change and at the United Nations climate talks last year, the United States joined nearly 200 other countries in a pledge to transition away from coal, oil and gas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Britain Awards 10 Contracts for Offshore Wind Projects

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      The successful outcome of the government auction for renewable energy projects may bolster a wind industry battered by rising costs.The British government on Tuesday awarded price support contracts for a series of offshore wind farms as part of a wider package for renewable energy, a reversal from a disappointing auction last year in which there were no takers for offshore wind projects.“The government has shown it takes renewable energy seriously,” Duncan Clark, the head of Britain and Ireland for the Danish wind developer Orsted, which received support for two projects in the auction, said in a statement.Overall the government awarded support for 131 renewable energy projects including onshore wind as well as solar and tidal power. RenewableUK, an industry group, estimates that the installations, if completed, could attract £14 billion, or about $18 billion, in investment and power nearly 11 million homes.The government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer is betting on offshore wind as “the backbone of the clean energy mission” to shift from oil and gas to renewable energy sources in a matter of years.The governing Labour Party realized that if it wanted to retain Britain’s leading position in offshore wind installation, it needed to substantially increase price supports to help developers tackle the estimated 40 percent increase in the costs of building these projects in recent years. Offshore wind is attractive in Britain because of abundant wind and large areas of shallow seabed off the coasts, especially in the North Sea. Investors are also attracted to the profits from these projects, which can cost billions of dollars.Stephen Bull, chief executive of Vargronn, which received support for a floating offshore wind farm off Scotland called Green Volt, said in an interview that the auction may not have reversed the impact of last year’s failure, but the results put Britain “on the right track.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More