. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. David Callaway looks at why big tech is backtracking on climate pledges to gain a foothold in the AI arms race. Plus, he explains why two more energy companies took the offer when the Trump administration said it would pay them hundreds of millions of dollars not to build offshore wind farms. Have a great weekend and please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.

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. . . . The backtracking on climate pledges by large Wall Street firms in the past few years has fully spread to the biggest tech companies as their emissions from power used to scale their AI ambitions soar, David Callaway writes. The problem is that in their rush to build data centers to compete in the AI arms race, the large tech companies have for the most part chosen natural gas as their power source. As a result, their emissions have leaped rather than fallen.

Read more here

. . . . People who follow the global oil markets tend to measure important shifts in geopolitical, generational events. The departure of the UAE from OPEC after 58 years was a long time coming, but the Iran war pushed them over the edge. And they decided to go it alone. David Callaway explains why these events are good for clean energy and why oil demand may never be the same.

Behind the latest oil shock

. . . . Top Silicon Valley fundraisers are investing in a new AI idea that takes energy from the sea. In the tech arms race around AI, even space is no longer the final frontier. An ocean technology company from Oregon just raised $140 million from some of Silicon Valley’s leading fundraisers.

Floating new ideas

. . . . Of all the business and investing strategies available to us, there’s nothing like being paid not to work, David Callaway writes in his Zeus column this week. So, he says, it’s understandable why two more energy companies took the bid when the Trump administration said it would pay them hundreds of millions of dollars not to build offshore wind farms on the East and West coasts.

What's the long-term cost?

. . . . California and two other states agreed last week to cut their water usage for both farms and consumers over the next three years as the rapidly drying Colorado River crisis in the Western U.S. becomes unsustainable after another year of drought and lack of snowpack. These are the sacrifices, forced upon business and the public, that will become more prevalent in coming years if action isn’t jointly taken to prevent the ravages of climate change.

Read more here

. . . . Mexico City is sinking so quickly it can be seen from space. New satellite imagery released this week by NASA shows the Mexican capital, covering 3,000 square miles and home to 22 million people, is one of the world’s fastest-subsiding metropolises. Extensive groundwater pumping and urban development have dramatically shrunk the aquifer. Parts of the region are sinking at a rate of about 9.5 inches a year.

More greenery . . . .

Don’t forget the plants: Climate change is endangering tens of thousands of species (The AP)

Gesundheit: How Climate Change Makes Your Allergies Worse (Inside Climate News)

Did that age well?: A look back at ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ 20 years later (Yale Climate Connections)

Don’t miss a spot: Despite increasingly effective sunscreens, skin cancer is on the rise (AAMC)

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The backtracking on climate pledges by large Wall Street firms in the past few years has fully spread to the biggest tech companies as their emissions from power used to scale their AI ambitions soar.

Last month, Microsoft paused its purchase of carbon removal contracts to offset its pollution, igniting a firestorm of concern in that nascent business of taking carbon from the atmosphere.

This week, Microsoft is weighing whether to remove one of its most ambitious sustainability targets, according to Bloomberg News. That’s the goal of using renewable energy purchases to match 100% of its hourly electricity usage by 2030. Microsoft issued another “non-denial denial,” saying its sustainability goals remain the same but it needs to adjust strategies as its AI energy ambitions develop.

The problem is that in their rush to build data centers around the world to compete in the AI arms race, the large tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon , Alphabet and Meta have for the most part chosen natural gas as their power source, as it currently is quicker and easier to use. As a result, their emissions have leaped in the past few years, rather than fallen as hoped for. So, throwing money at buying clean energy or carbon removal contracts starts to look irresponsible, at least on the balance sheet if not for the climate.

Microsoft, in particular, has been a leading advocate of clean energy usage, and last year did several major deals to buy nuclear energy from major developers. But the AI arms race changes week to week, day to day, and nobody in the big tech companies wants to be left behind. Climate pledges, all the rage five years ago before the advent of ChatGPT, are unfortunately now becoming collateral damage.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Zeus: Why offshore wind companies take Trump’s money and run

. . . . Last week, the Trump administration said it would pay two more offshore wind projects to stop building in a deal that would require them to direct the money to oil and gas projects instead. The deal makes short-term sense, writes David Callaway. The investors are simply getting back the money they spent on licensing fees to the Biden administration for the right to build wind farms off the East and West coasts, in exchange for a vague promise to produce more oil and gas. But long term, the wind projects that were developed by the investors, including asset management giant BlackRock, will suffer as investors and consumers increasingly move to wind and other renewable energy to save on costs in an energy security world.

Read the full Zeus column

Thursday’s subscriber insights

California leads short-term fix of Colorado River water crisis

. . . . California and two other states agreed last week to cut their water usage for both farms and consumers over the next three years as the rapidly drying Colorado River crisis in the Western U.S. becomes unsustainable after another year of drought and lack of snowpack.

The action by California, Nevada and Arizona, comes as a larger group of seven states which represent 40 million water users of the important river, have failed to come up with a compromise after years of negotiations and federal prodding.

The three states who agreed to cut, the so-called lower basin states, are among the biggest users. They said they would share cuts of about 3.2 million acre-feet of water, with cuts coming to both farms that use the water for irrigation and consumer rationing. California’s cuts come to about 13% of its usage, according to the LA Times.

The Colorado River has been depleted significantly in the past quarter century, with its two biggest basins, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, each down to less than a third of full capacity. With the cuts, the states will likely be forced to pay farmers not to use the water to grow their crops and find incentives for consumers to cut back.

These are the sacrifices, forced upon business and the public, that will become more prevalent in coming years if action isn’t jointly taken to prevent the ravages of climate change. As we can see here, the little guy will suffer the brunt of failed negotiations and poor water management over decades.

For investors, the Colorado River scenario will play out in more expensive water rights and price rises among certain crops, which will feed to the businesses of the wholesalers, supermarkets, and ultimately the consumers themselves. The three lower basin states deserve a hand for taking the decision earlier, but it won’t be enough unless there is a complete agreement among all users soon.

Editor’s picks: Climate change or crazy weather? Plus, AI booms sparks grid warning

Watch the video: It’s one of the most commonly debated questions in the climate world: Is this weather we’re experiencing natural, or is it linked to man-made climate change? In this episode of The Climate Question from BBC World Service, hosts Graihagh Jackson and Jordan Dunbar are joined by BBC Lead Weather Presenter Matt Taylor.

AI boom sparks rare power grid warning

The North American Electric Reliability Corp., the non-profit security monitor for North America’s power grid, said it will issue its highest level of warning May 11 about threats to the power system from large data centers, underscoring the challenges facing utilities and grid operators grappling with a surge in electricity demand. E&E News by Politico reports the agency said, “Computational loads, such as data centers, could increase exponentially in the next four years.” NERC said in a draft of the alert that “significant risks” to the bulk power system “need to be addressed through immediate industry action.” Lee Shaver, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called NERC’s action a “big deal,” noting it is only the third time in history that the organization has issued a Level 3 alert.

Latest findings: New research, studies and projects

Alaskan megatsunami wrought by climate change

An Alaskan megatsunami bigger than the Empire State Building was triggered by climate change, researchers say. You may not have heard about it because it happened in the state’s Tracy Arm Fjord at 5:30 a.m. Aug. 10, 2025. The fjord is a popular tourist spot, but at that early hour, no boats or cruise ships were in the area. The glacier supporting the mountain has retreated as temperatures rose, leaving the rock unsupported and triggering a landslide. Scientists said the resulting wave was up to 1,578 feet tall, making it higher than New York City’s Empire State Building. It was so powerful it violently stripped away vegetation and left behind scarring on the steep rock walls. University of Calgary geomorphologist Dan Shugar, lead author of the study published in the journal Science, told Sky News, “The fact that the landslide occurred this early in the morning was unbelievably lucky. Next time — and there will be a next time — we may not be so lucky.” University College London geophysicist and study co-author Stephen Hicks said, “This collapse triggered a seismic wave observed around the globe.”

Words to live by . . . .

“In the spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.” — Mark Twain.

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Of all the business and investing strategies available to us, there’s nothing like being paid not to work. So we can understand why two more energy companies took the bid last week when the Trump administration said it would pay them hundreds of millions of dollars not to build offshore wind farms on the East and West coasts.

Following a successful offer last month from the Interior Department to pay Total Energies of France not to follow through with an offshore wind farm, two more projects were lined up to take the government money. Each is a joint venture involving European energy companies, with the one on the East Coast partly run by BlackRock , the giant fund manager that at one time promoted renewable power as a means to fight climate risk.

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— Top Silicon Valley fundraisers are investing in a new AI idea that takes energy from the sea

— Clean energy investments are rising. Just don’t say it’s to fight climate change

— Mexico City is sinking, but also faces a water crisis

— Desalination plant targeted to offset the shrinking Rio Grande

— More than 2.12 billion tons of waste dumped on the planet each year, analysis says

In the tech arms race around AI, even space is no longer the final frontier. An ocean technology company from Oregon just raised $140 million from some of Silicon Valley’s leading fundraisers to create energy and power AI data from the sea.

Panthalassa, which has been working on ways to develop renewable energy on the high seas for more than a decade, said it hopes to use the money to complete a pilot manufacturing facility that would begin commercial development as soon as next year. The money raised, including from notable names such as Peter Thiel, venture capitalist John Doerr, and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, values the company at about $1 billion.

The Portland-based company said it developed large nodes, about 300 feet high, that would float among the waves, drive themselves around, and produce energy from waves by pushing it through turbines. The unique AI angle is that it would use the energy to develop AI data on the spot, not transmit the energy, instead transfer just the data via satellite.

It’s a particular feature of the current AI boom in that almost no idea seems too ridiculous. AI data centers in space, as Elon Musk wants, would be closer to the sun. AI data centers in the ocean would solve the issue of finding enough water to cool the AI server, which is a major problem for new data centers on land. The industry is so nascent — and so untested — that to startup investors almost anything is worth a bet as long as it is unique (and mentions AI).

If this all seems like the very peak of a bubble, it’s probably not. The latest earnings releases from the big tech players such as Google , Amazon and Microsoft show revenue from AI is keeping up with massive spending plans. So, it’s not like the Internet bubble. But it’s worth it for investors to keep their eyes focused on the development of these data centers, not the news releases, as with all new ideas the real execution is in the buildout.

And maybe while Panthalassa is at it, it can use the nodes to collect some of that sea waste along the way.

If you have ideas or suggestions for us, contact me directly at
dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Tuesday’s investor insights

Renewable energy funds in spotlight as investors see shift in demand

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People who follow the global oil markets tend to measure important shifts in geopolitical, generational events. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The collapse of prices at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020. And the big one — the oil shock of 1973, when OPEC became a sinister word in Western markets.

The Iran war is no less important, as the closing of the Strait of Hormuz was something that most analysts considered so improbable that they wouldn’t even include it in their risk-planning scenarios. But last week something happened that future energy historians might someday view as the beginning of the end for OPEC, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Read more

(Bill Sternberg is a veteran Washington journalist and former editorial page editor of USA Today.)

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, the clean energy industry has been a political punching bag in Washington.

Trump rarely misses an opportunity to denounce what he calls the “green new scam.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vows that the Pentagon won’t do any “climate change crap.” The administration has rolled back renewable energy grants and targeted an array of wind projects.

Most notably, Trump’s tax law, approved by the Republican-controlled Congress last summer, wiped out more than $600 billion in federal subsidies for electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and other green technologies.

Now, at long last, some wealthy clean tech investors have decided they are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. They are taking a new tack: hardball politics.

Read more

(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Ready for this week’s green investing pop quiz? What percentage of your carbon footprint would you offset by investing $12,000 in a green energy fund for the next 10 years?

It’s not easy to even estimate an answer, of course, since you have to make complex assumptions, such as how your $12,000 investment will affect the cost of capital for each of the companies whose stocks the fund owns. But if you’re like the average of more than two thousand European retail investors who recently were asked this question, you believe your investment will offset 16.7% — one sixth — of your annual carbon footprint.

This survey was part of an academic study that just began circulating in academic circles. Titled “Beliefs About the Climate Impact of Green Investing,” the study was conducted by Florian Heeb of the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE in Frankfurt, Germany, and Julian Kölbel and Camilla Weder of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Note that the investment amount used in the researchers’ survey was €10,000, which is approximately equal to $12,000.

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(Michael Molinski is a senior economist at Trendline Economics. He’s worked for Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Wells Fargo, and previously as a foreign correspondent and editor for Bloomberg News and MarketWatch.)

HAVANA, Cuba (Callaway Climate Insights) — Cuba is undergoing yet another energy crisis inflicted by a foreign power. This time it’s a U.S. embargo on oil shipments, mandated by President Donald Trump. On the surface, it seems Cuba can’t exist without oil. Or can it?

In 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union halted virtually all of Cuba’s oil shipments, I visited a farm outside Havana that was designed to produce energy from pig feces. It was quite astounding. In row after row of pig pens, these sows would do nothing but eat and shit, and their feces entered a system of conveyor belts, which was transported by truck to an energy producer that turned the pig feces into biofuel.

Since then, Cuba has not had to rely so much on biofuel because it found Venezuela to be a willing partner for their “oil-for-doctors” program. Venezuela supplied as much as 60% of Cuba’s energy needs, and Cuba supplied its well-trained supply of doctors to Venezuela.

That all ended when Trump invaded Venezuela and implemented an oil embargo, exerting pressure on countries supplying more than half of the remaining energy to Cuba.

How will Cuba survive without oil?

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DUBROVNIK, Croatia (Callaway Climate Insights) — Flying down the Dalmatian coast toward Dubrovnik this week to watch my daughter run a race around Croatia’s ancient walled city, I was struck by the presence of a line of wind turbines along the length of one of the approaching islands.

Far from taking away from its beauty, the wind turbines added to the romance of what has become one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations. Indeed, Croatia has taken the lead in its Central European region in renewables, with wind power, hydro and rising solar adoption accounting for some 60% of its energy production last year.

Some of that is forced by the realities of the war in Ukraine, which has hit the availability and price of Russian oil in recent years. But the trend toward renewables and self-sufficiency is one we will soon see more of across Europe.

As it happens, a major new report this week from clean energy think tank Ember announced that renewables had eclipsed coal for the first time in 2025 in terms of global electricity generation.

The passing of coal has been a long time coming, and the trend looks set to continue to move strongly this year as fossil fuels suffer from the new war in Iran.

The current wars will end someday, but coal’s century-long grip on the world is finally over. And it looks great.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Zeus: How Tim Cook’s climate lesson saved Apple investors

. . . . Tim Cook’s 15-year run at Apple can be regarded as one of the most successful corporate reigns in history. But it wasn’t all soaring shares and iPhones, writes David Callaway. Early on after he replaced the legendary Steve Jobs, Cook learned a valuable lesson about running a major manufacturer and fighting climate change — one that should benefit every CEO in these tumultuous climate times. How he handled it may have saved Apple’s extraordinary winning streak.

Read the full Zeus column

Thursday’s subscriber insights

Trump sets sights on World Bank’s climate agenda

. . . . President Donald Trump and his team have not been shy about pushing international institutions such as the United Nations and European Union around on their climate ambitions.

Using a variety of trade threats and other economic bullying, the White House has successfully twisted enough arms to get even the most lukewarm initiatives watered down farther, or abandoned over the past year.

Now it’s going after the World Bank in its own backyard of Washington D.C. Using last week’s spring bank meetings in the U.S. capital as an attack point, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the White House expects the World Bank to end its five-year-old Climate Change Action Plan when it expires in June.

The plan, which has been successful if somewhat controversial in how it is measured, calls for the World Bank to commit 45% of its annual budget to projects with climate benefits. The results have been a doubling of climate investments since 2021.

The worry is that the administration, which is the largest shareholder of the World Bank with the most voting power of any country, will push it to restart funding of gas and oil projects, which it suspended before it set up the climate plan years ago.

We won’t have to wait long to find out. But if it happens it will be another major source of climate fighting investment choked off in the name of the so-called energy security.

Editor’s picks: Earth’s energy imbalance; plus, record drought throughout the U.S.

Watch the video: Go behind the scenes with Inside Climate News Senior Editor Corey Mitchell and reporter Bob Berwyn as they discuss critical measures of the planet’s health. Berwyn, who covers climate science for Inside Climate News, explains the real-world impacts of the energy imbalance, as well as melting glaciers, sea level rise, and pollution from unregulated space activity; and the disconnect between scientific knowledge and political action today.

Record U.S. drought for this time of year

Food prices, wildfire season and water issues throughout the west are at risk due to record levels of drought in the contiguous U.S., according to recent weather data. Seth Borenstein reports for The Associated Press that more than 61% of the Lower 48 states is in moderate to exceptional drought — including 97% of the Southeast and two-thirds of the West — according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Those are the highest levels for this time of year since the drought monitor began in 2000. According to the report, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s comprehensive Palmer Drought Severity Index not only hit its highest level for March since records started in 1895, but last month was the third-driest month recorded regardless of time of year. It trailed only the famed Dust Bowl months of July and August 1934.

Latest findings: New research, studies and projects

Threats to gray whales in San Francisco Bay Area

Eastern North Pacific gray whales can often be observed in and around the San Francisco Bay. The worrying question is why so many are dying there. Last year, a record number of 21 dead gray whales were found in the broader San Francisco Bay. The BBC reports that so far this year, seven have died due to a combination of dwindling prey availability, climate change and human causes. According to the report, this species of whales wasn’t known to usually stop in the bay prior to 2018. The whales’ migration route takes them down to Baja California and back up the Arctic. Josephine Slaathaug, a graduate student at Sonoma State University and the lead author of the study on gray whale mortality in the bay, told the BBC this species stop near San Francisco is “a new habitat that they’ve chosen to utilize.” She added there have been years of steep declines in their prey in the Arctic. Many of those that turned up in the bay are adult and juvenile males that are heading to the Arctic. Notably, the whales observed are skinnier than they normally would be at this time of year, Slaathaug and several other researchers told the BBC. The lack of food may be what’s driving the whales into the bay, researchers say, but starvation is only part of the problem. In recent years, nearly one-fifth of the gray whales that have swum into the San Francisco Bay have died there, usually after being struck by ships, according to Slaathaug’s study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science this week.

Words to live by . . . .

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” — William Shakespeare.

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The end of the Tim Cook era this week seems like a good time to admit I was on the wrong side of what became one of the most successful trades in history 15 years ago when Cook replaced Steve Jobs as CEO just before the legendary Apple founder died.

At the time, with the iPhone only four years old, Jobs was being compared to Thomas Edison in terms of the impact of his invention on society. Apple shares had soared for years. How could they go higher? His death was an obvious sell sign.

A decade-and-a-half later those shares have soared 20-fold, adjusted for splits, as Cook has expertly ridden and expanded the iPhone phenomenon to make Apple one of the most profitable companies of all time.

But if it weren’t for a valuable lesson in handling climate change in the early years after Cook took over in 2011, it might never have happened.

Read more

— A weakened Labour party turns its back on climate ambitions as elections near

— Solar power takes largest share of energy demand for first time

— California’s iconic beaches are becoming starved for sand

— Wildfires are burning later into the night, new study shows

— Warming oceans may be overheating Great White Sharks

LONDON (Callaway Climate Insight) — It was only 21 months ago that Britain’s Labour Party, celebrating a return to power after 14 years of disastrous Conservative rule, rang its ambitious climate agenda from bell towers across the United Kingdom.

Despite an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his team promised the UK would become a clean energy superpower. They would completely decarbonize Britain’s electric grid by 2030. They would set up a Great British Energy Company to partner with renewable startups to move the economy away from oil and gas and London’s old nickname, the Big Smoke, for its pollution. And they would invest again in nuclear technologies.

Less than two years later, those plans are in tatters as the reality of high energy prices — made worse by the Iran war — and a scandal-battered government limp toward an expected pummeling in local elections next month.

Nuclear ambitions are on hold. The government confirmed this week its first national data center will be powered by gas and not renewables, and pressure to begin drilling for oil again in the North Sea is becoming too great to ignore.

Governing is of course much harder than it looks from the opposition benches, as every new ruling party eventually finds out. Some sooner than later.

Starmer’s inevitable reset next month after the May 7 elections will be painful, not just for the environment but for everybody as it will likely have little benefit on prices without investment in new forms of energy.

If you have ideas or suggestions for us, contact me directly at
dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Tuesday’s subscriber insights

A question of demand in global energy

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LONDON (Callaway Climate Insights) — The data center arms race at the heart of the AI revolution is beginning to become a major political issue in the U.S. as battle lines are drawn ahead of the major midterm elections in November.

But rather than a red-state, blue-state issue, this battle comes down to the price of energy and availability of water, two things voters on both sides of the political spectrum agree on. In the middle, as always, are the Big Tech companies — which have been less than transparent about the power and environmental footprints inflicted on states by their data center development.

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. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. David Callaway pays tribute to famed emerging markets investor Mark Mobius, and looks at the impacts of Europe’s coming summer energy crisis. Mark Hulbert reviews first-quarter gains for both clean energy funds and fossil fuel funds. Have a great weekend and don’t forget Earth Day next week. Please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.

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. . . . Mark Mobius was sometimes called the Indiana Jones of emerging markets. The storied investor died this week at 89, and David Callaway pays tribute to the famed fund manager. Many of the picks that led his flagship Templeton fund to average annual returns of more than 13% over 30 years were energy companies trying to power the economies of their “emerging” countries. He was a big advocate of renewable energy and its potential, especially in Asia, Callaway writes.

Read more here

. . . . Despite March’s volatility, it was a strong quarter for clean energy funds — just not as strong as fossil fuel funds, writes Mark Hulbert. The average clean and sustainable energy fund rose 6.4% in the first three months of the year. The average fossil fuel fund rose 36.7%. Perhaps not surprising given the Iran war’s impact on oil prices. But here’s the unusual thing. In both cases, most of the gains in both sectors came in January and February, before the bombing of Iran began. Hulbert explains why.

Read the full column

. . . . The market for carbon credits was always suspect. And nobody really ever knew how well those offsets worked. Now, Microsoft’s plan to pause its purchase of carbon credits is a big deal. As Microsoft represented about 90% of the business last year, and an estimated 80% to 90% of all carbon credits in existence, it effectively kills whatever market there was. For the carbon removal startups that were so hot only a few years ago, there is little hope without Big Tech. What’s next?

Again, it comes back to AI

. . . . In Ireland, two weeks of increasingly violent protests over fuel costs have led to a motion of confidence in the Irish parliament. In Germany and Spain, governments are asking European regulators for breaks on fuel taxes and climate fees as prices soar and supplies of aviation fuel run low. And in the UK, the Labour’s government’s environmental pledge not to restart North Sea oil licensing is hanging by a thread. Welcome to Europe’s coming summer energy crisis, writes David Callaway. This has every chance of toppling governments and shifting elections if it develops as many energy experts and economies think it might.

Read more here

. . . . What does an entrepreneur with two successful exits do for his next act? Build an innovation hub to lead an army of entrepreneurs. That’s what David Perez is doing, setting up an innovation hub near Los Alamos National Laboratory in Santa Fe, N.M. While Santa Fe may seem an unlikely place, Perez tells us the proximity to Los Alamos is key. But the real reason is that the startup community in the Southwestern city needs the support. “There’s a need for an innovation hub to create a center of gravity,” Perez said. “The creative sparks that fly come from working in a common space.”

Read more here

. . . . Americans’ assessments of the environment are particularly bleak ahead of Earth Day, as a record-low 35% offer a positive rating of the environment’s quality and two-thirds say it is worsening. That’s according to a new Gallup poll, the results of which were released this week. Wednesday, April 22 is Earth Day. The first Earth Day was in 1970, when an estimated 20 million Americans came out to the streets, parks and civic gathering places to support a global environmental movement and protest the impact on the natural world of 150 years of industrial development. The theme for Earth Day 2026 is “Our Power, Our Planet.”

More greenery . . . .

Your allergies are worse: And climate change and pollution are to blame (Mother Jones)

Rainwater harvesting and eco-gardens: Helping a whole city become more resilient (The Guardian)

Bad waters: Methane is bubbling out of reservoirs (Los Angeles Times)

In hot water: Disease, environmental stress threaten Norway’s salmon farms (Undercurrent News)

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LONDON (Callaway Climate Insights) — My first and only interview with Mark Mobius was on the beach outside the Martinez Hotel in Cannes in the South of France in the early 1990s. I was a young European reporter with Bloomberg and he was the head of emerging markets for Franklin Templeton, stopping in to an investor conference to give the keynote while on his way to Russia.

“If you want to ask a few questions, come with me,” he said, as he strode out of the lobby and across the famed Croisette, shed his dress shirt and shoes and plopped down on a beach chair. For 10 minutes we discussed global markets as he basked in the sun. Then just as quickly, he put on his shirt and shoes, hailed a taxi and was off to the airport.

Mobius was always on the move; averaging some 300 days a year on the road visiting companies in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America on his Franklin Templeton private jet. For a while, the confirmed bachelor with an iconic bald head was known as the Indiana Jones of emerging markets.

Many of the picks that led his flagship Templeton fund to average annual returns of more than 13% over 30 years, according to Bloomberg, were energy companies trying to power the economies of their “emerging” countries. He was a big advocate of renewable energy and its potential, especially in Asia.

Mobius was a markets fanatic until the day he died this week at the age of 89, and only last month wrote on his Substack that global markets would endure and rebound from the Iran war once the extent of its duration became clear.

Emerging markets are the most volatile of investments and always subject to geopolitical winds. The emerging markets of today were the same ones when I interviewed Mobius in the 1990s, indeed the same as the 1890s. Always emerging, never emerged.

But Mobius made them colorful; eternally full of promise. And he made a lot of money for his followers while doing it. Safe travels.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Clean energy funds’ strong quarter dwarfed by fossil fuel gains

. . . . Despite March’s volatility, it was a strong quarter for clean energy funds — just not as strong as fossil fuel funds, writes Mark Hulbert. The average clean and sustainable energy fund rose 6.4% in the first three months of the year. The average fossil fuel fund rose 36.7%. Perhaps not surprising given the Iran war’s impact on oil prices. But here’s the unusual thing. In both cases, most of the gains in both sectors came in January and February, before the bombing of Iran began. Hulbert explains why.

Read the full column

Thursday’s subscriber insights

How Europe’s summer energy crisis could threaten governments

. . . . . In Ireland, two weeks of increasingly violent protests over fuel costs have led to a motion of confidence in the Irish parliament. In Germany and Spain, governments are asking European regulators for breaks on fuel taxes and climate fees as prices soar and supplies of aviation fuel run low.

And in the UK, the Labour’s government’s environmental pledge not to restart North Sea oil licensing is hanging by a thread. The government instead promised some £600 million ($814 million) to engineering giant Rolls-Royce to build small nuclear reactors, which could take years, even if it ever works.

Welcome to Europe’s coming summer energy crisis, which has every chance of toppling governments and shifting elections if it develops as many energy experts and economies think it might.

While global stock markets are behaving as if nothing is wrong, regaining momentum toward records as the AI train resumes its one-way journey, energy markets tell a different story.

Oil prices, even at these lofty levels, might still not be factoring in a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Some airports report only a few weeks left of jet fuel, as they compete with local militaries trying to bulk up defenses because of the war.

If prices really start to bite, elected officials are first in the crosshairs. That’s why so many countries are now slashing fuel taxes. Here in the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer must decide soon whether to keep a planned and budgeted fuel tax hike — the first in years — or abandon it to fight prices.

It’s hard to see he really has a choice, if Labour want to keep their leadership jobs.

Editor’s picks: How China powers the world; plus, Americans’ view of the environment is bleak ahead of Earth Day

Watch the video: China is the world’s biggest producer of rare earths — the minerals sometimes called the “oil of the 21st century.” We need rare earths for tech like mobile phones, but is the environmental price of mining them too high? In 2025, BBC China Correspondent Laura Bicker visited two of the biggest production areas in the world. She saw the economic benefits the new industry can bring, but also the damage caused by the toxic chemicals used in mining rare earths.

Americans’ view of environment poor ahead of Earth Day

Americans’ assessments of the environment are particularly bleak ahead of Earth Day, as a record-low 35% offer a positive rating of the environment’s quality and two-thirds say it is worsening. That’s according to a new Gallup poll, the results of which were released this week. Wednesday, April 22 is Earth Day. The first Earth Day was in 1970, when an estimated 20 million Americans came out to the streets, parks and civic gathering places to support a global environmental movement and protest the impact on the natural world of 150 years of industrial development. The theme for Earth Day 2026 is “Our Power, Our Planet.” Gallup says more than three in five U.S. adults, 63%, think the government is not doing enough to protect the environment, and most believe environmental protection should be prioritized over economic growth (58%) and development of U.S. energy sources (57%). Gallup’s March 2-18 annual environment poll also finds that of eight specific environmental problems, water pollution and safe drinking water are the most worrisome to Americans. Sharp partisan differences continue in all of these views of the environment, Gallup said.

Words to live by . . . .

“In the face of impending catastrophe, whose warning signs are already unbearably disastrous, weak action is unwise. No action is dangerous.” — William Ruto, president of Kenya.

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(Mark Hulbert, an author and longtime investment columnist, is the founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest; his Hulbert Ratings audits investment newsletter returns.)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Callaway Climate Insights) — Clean energy investors should be very pleased with how their funds performed in the first quarter — so long as they don’t look at how much better fossil fuel funds did.

The average mutual fund and ETF that invests in clean and sustainable energy gained 6.4% in the first three months of this year, equivalent to 27.9% on an annualized basis. That’s nearly triple the average annual gain of the stock market as a whole.

Why, then, aren’t climate-friendly investors jumping up and down for joy? Because fossil fuel funds and ETFs did a whole lot better, gaining an average of 36.7% during the first quarter. That’s equivalent to 249% annualized.

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— Microsoft may have just killed the fledgling carbon removal market with its AI ambitions

— New Mexico Innovation Hub comes to life near Los Alamos

— How climate change weighs on the Doomsday Clock

— Antarctic fur seal, Emperor penguin now on endangered list

— Ahead of fire season, Forest Service will close 57 of 77 research facilities

LONDON (Callaway Climate Insights) — The market for carbon credits was always suspect. Big companies would pay to buy voluntary contracts to offset the pollution they spewed into the atmosphere; instead of just cutting that pollution. And nobody really ever knew how well those offsets worked.

But the money raised by the credits was used to fund fledgling carbon removal technologies, such as direct air capture. It subsidized hundreds of schemes and startups trying to find ways to remove harmful carbon, including from fossil fuel plants as they are operating.

Which is why Microsoft’s plan to pause its purchase of carbon credits, first reported last week by Heatmap, is such a big deal. As Microsoft represented about 90% of the business last year, and an estimated 80% to 90% of all carbon credits in existence, it effectively kills whatever market there was. If you could even call it a market.

Microsoft denied it was reducing its climate ambitions and said it could start buying again at any time as part of an altered strategy. But given its exploding data center costs, there is no real reason. It can’t compete in the AI arms race and at the same time get to net zero on carbon by its 2030 goal; and the credits yield no revenue or anything other than cost and a good climate reputation. It’s a classic case of one business line — AI data centers — making another redundant. Any chief financial officer would argue the same.

To put this in context, the estimated value of existing credits is between $1 billion and $2 billion. It is supposed to balloon to $10 billion by 2030, but only if Microsoft and other tech companies such as Google keep spending.

The amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere by carbon technologies last year was about $1.3 million tons, or less than 1% of the amount removed by planting trees. The amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere was about 38 billion tons, according to the International Energy Agency.

For the carbon removal startups that were so hot only a few years ago, there is little hope without Big Tech. Government help has always fallen short, now more than ever with the energy crisis. If anything, the shiny new toys for governments are fusion companies and other nuclear technologies.

There will be some buyers of last resort. The fossil fuel companies themselves, which can capture their own carbon and find other ways to monetize it.

Not much of a market, is it? Chalk another industry victim up to the miracles of AI.

If you have ideas or suggestions for us, contact me directly at
dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Tuesday’s subscriber insight

New Mexico Innovation Hub comes to life near Los Alamos

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LONDON (Callaway Climate Insights) — By all accounts, ousted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was as hostile as any right-wing strongman to climate initiatives over his 16-year reign.

He courted Russian oil, rejected solar panel projects and routinely vetoed European Union climate policies as too expensive for Hungarian industry. A populist among people who support environmental progress, he often provided lip service to renewable ideas but rarely followed up.

As Europe celebrates his defeat in Sunday’s election and looks forward with hope to a reformist government friendly to the EU under new Prime Minister Peter Magyar, it’s tempting to look for any signs of a new climate dawn in Hungary.

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. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here’s our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. David Callaway says the annual spring meetings of global bankers in Washington, D.C. next week will be a far cry from the growth and climate themes of just a few years ago. Also this week: Why recycled plastic is suddenly a bargain, and why forecasters are warning of a “super” El Niño. Have a great weekend and please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.

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. . . . The Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. are the same this month but the focus of the annual spring meetings of global bankers next week are a far cry from the growth and climate themes of just a few years ago. Now it’s all war, energy shortages and downgraded economic outlooks, writes David Callaway. Like most global summits these days, leaders are left simply to gather together and speculate what will happen next, their long-term vision completely eclipsed by the Trump rollercoaster. But IMF officials have set the tone: lowered growth estimates, concern about a banking crisis, and a new era of energy shortages.

Read more here

. . . . Time was when the idea of China hosting a global body on the future of the oceans would have raised a few eyebrows, especially among the countries it has pestered on the South China Sea. But such is the state of China’s climate and renewable energy status these days with the U.S. effectively on the sidelines of the global climate debate that the country boldly bid last week to become the first Asian-Pacific host of a UN governing body — this one on international ocean governance.

Read more here

. . . . A rare benefit of soaring oil prices? Recycled plastic is suddenly a bargain. In a guest column, Douglas Woodring, founder and managing director of Ocean Recovery Alliance, outlines the shifting economics. Growing consumer and investor scrutiny means that recycled plastic’s choice as an ethical option need not come at a premium. It now may become a critical, strategic choice, and one that offers resilience, cost competitiveness, and environmental benefit at the same time.

Read more here

. . . . One of the silver linings cited by climate advocates after Donald Trump was re-elected was that no matter how much damage he did to federal environmental efforts, the states would still carry the climate baton, writes David Callaway. A year-and-a-half later, even the most climate-friendly states, such as New York and California, are scaling back their ambitions in the face of soaring energy costs, budget restraints, and rising anti-climate populism in an election year. The pushing back of energy reduction targets and shifting of funds from climate projects to other priorities sets states back years in their efforts and is difficult to reverse. Unlike the popular Trump TACO trade, which was in full effect again this week after the president declared a ceasefire in Iran, policy changes in state and local communities don’t reverse themselves on a dime.

Read the full Zeus column

. . . . Forecasters and climate models are signaling a powerful “super” El Niño could develop later this year. USA Today reports a super El Niño — also referred to as a “Jurassic El Niño” by Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach — refers to unusually strong warming of sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. That warming can disrupt global weather patterns, shifting storm tracks, rainfall and temperatures for months at a time. Multiple long-range models are trending warmer, with some pushing into territory rarely seen in modern records.

More greenery . . . .

Climate change shrinks sea ice: Emperor penguins now endangered (CBC News)

Hot, hot, hot: March smashes heat records for continental U.S. (NBC News)

It’s raining harder: Why flooding risks in Chicago are rising (WBEZ Chicago)

North American birds: Taking flight from climate change (Climate Central)

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The Cherry Blossoms in Washington D.C. are the same this month but the focus of the annual spring meetings of global bankers next week are a far cry from the growth and climate themes of just a few years ago. Now it’s all war, energy shortages and downgraded economic outlooks.

While global leaders spend their time these past few weeks trying to guess what outrage President Donald Trump will send their way next, bankers at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which host the meetings of international financial leaders, are left to estimate the impact of the war in Iran.

“Had it not been for this shock, we would have been upgrading global growth,” said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, in a speech today ahead of the meetings. “But now, even our most hopeful scenario involves a downgrade.”

It was just three years ago that the investing world was looking forward to the arrival of Ajay Banga as the new head of the World Bank, amid speculation he would boost its climate investing around the world. Now his IMF counterpart Georgieva speculates the war will lead to as much as $50 billion in new support from her fund to help repair Middle Eastern economies, on top of the $140 billion in existing investments.

Like most global summits these days, leaders are left simply to gather together and speculate what will happen next, their long-term vision completely eclipsed by the Trump rollercoaster. But Georgieva has set the tone for a week of lowered growth estimates, concern about a banking crisis, and a new era of energy shortages whose impact at this point is simply anybody’s guess.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas at dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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Zeus: TACO trade won’t help struggling state climate efforts

. . . . One of the silver linings cited by climate advocates after Donald Trump was re-elected was that no matter how much damage he did to federal environmental efforts, the states would still carry the climate baton, writes David Callaway. A year-and-a-half later, even the most climate-friendly states, such as New York and California, are scaling back their ambitions in the face of soaring energy costs, budget restraints, and rising anti-climate populism in an election year. The pushing back of energy reduction targets and shifting of funds from climate projects to other priorities sets states back years in their efforts and is difficult to reverse. Unlike the popular Trump TACO trade, which was in full effect again this week after the president declared a ceasefire in Iran, policy changes in state and local communities don’t reverse themselves on a dime.

Read the full Zeus column

Thursday’s subscriber insights

Candela founder names new CEO for next stage of growth

. . . . Gustav Hasselkog, the entrepreneur who founded growing Swedish electric boat and ferry company Candela Technology AB, said this week he will step aside after 11 years and name a new CEO to manage the next stage of the company’s growth.

Candela said Sofia Graflund will be its new chief executive starting in June, when Hasselkog assumes the role of executive chairman after the company’s annual meeting. Graflund is currently chief strategy officer at Candela, and previously worked at EQT Ventures, an early investor in Candela. She also worked for Swedish battery maker Northvolt and at Heart Aerospace.

Astute readers of Callaway Climate Insights will remember that we took a ride on one of Candela’s speedboats in San Francisco Bay several years ago, and have been closely following the company ever since. It has gone on to become a primary designer of electric ferries and has won several contracts in both Sweden and Norway, which are heavily reliant on ferry traffic. It signed a new contract to supply 20 electric hydrofoil ferries to Norway just this week.

Candela is one of Europe’s most promising electric transportation startups, developing technology to build ferries that save up to 80% of the energy required to power similar diesel vehicles and leave hardly any wakes. A lot of its business is still focused on the Nordic countries, but it has expanded into America as well.

The company has raised more than €129 million ($151 million) to date, from investors including EQT, Ocean Zero LLC, and lately, the International Finance Corp. (IFC) a member of the World Bank Group. Analysts expect Candela to seek an IPO in the next few years.

Editor’s picks: Should fossil fuel ads be banned? Plus, a ‘Jurassic’ El Niño?

Listen to the podcast: Should we ban fossil fuel ads? Amsterdam is about to become the latest big city to ban ads for fossil fuels in order to fight climate change. But are bans a good idea, and do they make any difference? Hear more on the Climate Question podcast from the BBC World Service.

Signs of a ‘super’ El Niño

Forecasters and climate models are signaling a powerful “super” El Niño could develop later this year. USA Today reports a super El Niño — also referred to as a “Jurassic El Niño” by Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach — refers to unusually strong warming of sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. That warming can disrupt global weather patterns, shifting storm tracks, rainfall and temperatures for months at a time. The report says it’s not a certainty yet. But multiple long-range models are trending warmer, with some pushing into territory rarely seen in modern records. “El Niño typically brings cooler, wetter conditions to the Southern U.S. and milder winters to the North. While El Niño often suppresses Atlantic hurricane activity, major storms can still make landfall.”

Latest findings: New research, studies and projects

New tool: making climate scenarios work for finance

The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative has introduced a new tool designed to close a critical gap in climate decision making across global finance. ESG News reports the new platform, the Climate Pathways Navigator, offers banks, insurers, asset managers and export credit agencies direct access to the scenario data required to align portfolios with decarbonization targets. Built in collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the tool translates complex climate modeling into usable, sector-specific insights. According to the report, the launch comes as financial institutions face mounting pressure from regulators and investors to demonstrate credible transition plans. Without standardized, accessible data, many have struggled to move from commitments to execution. Read more from the UNEP about the Climate Pathways Navigator Tool here.

Words to live by . . . .

“The time is past when humankind thought it could selfishly draw on exhaustible resources. We know now the world is not a commodity, is not a source of revenue; it’s a common good, it’s our heritage. And the consequences of climate change are fully known now — we’re not talking about theories anymore, we’re talking about certainties.” — Former French President François Hollande.

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One of the primary silver linings that climate advocates turned to after Donald Trump won re-election is that no matter how much damage he did to federal environmental efforts — and nobody expected this much — at least many of the most committed U.S. states would still carry the baton.

“It’s all going to be up to the states now,” was a popular refrain.

Almost a year-and-a-half after the election, even the most climate-friendly states are starting to pull back, entangled in a crush of soaring energy costs, federal lawsuits from the White House, and rising anti-climate populism.

While it is a relief to see the latest TACO (Trump always chickens out) trade take place this week, with markets soaring after the president called a ceasefire in the Middle East, the reality on the ground in statehouses and local budget offices across the country is that not much has changed.

Gas prices are still high. Home heating — and soon cooling — costs are leaping. And state budgets are bursting as politicians try to maintain climate regulations in the face of what has become a national obsession with rising energy costs, and in particular the tech industry’s data center frenzy seen as a major player in them.

Last week, New York became the latest state to announce its intention to roll back climate initiatives. Gov. Kathy Hochul (above right) said current emission reduction targets were “costly and unattainable” given the rising cost of energy and public concerns about affordability.

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