Green Lights April 17: Top stories
Don't miss a single story from the best of Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . . 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.
. . . . 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.
. . . . 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.
. . . . 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?
. . . . 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.
. . . . 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.”
. . . . 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)