Economic gains from artificial intelligence will boost global output by around 0.5% a year between 2025 and 2030, outweighing the costs of rising carbon emissions by the data centres needed to run AI models, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
An IMF report released at its annual spring meeting in Washington nonetheless noted that those output gains would not be shared equally across the world, and called on policymakers and businesses to minimise costs to broader society.
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday that aims to jump-start mining on the ocean floor.
Large-scale deep sea mining has never been done — though some companies have pushed for it — but the seafloor is expected to contain valuable materials.
A Trump administration official told reporters Thursday that it expects to find manganese, cobalt, nickel and copper at the bottom of the ocean. These materials have energy, weapons and consumer uses, making up components of batteries, steel and more.
A large-scale environmental remediation effort is underway through a public-private initiative. The Well Done Foundation (WDF), in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is working to decommission more than 110 orphaned oil and gas wells across four National Wildlife Refuges. As part of this collaboration, WDF recently marked a major milestone: the successful plugging of its 50th orphaned well nationwide—and its first in Oklahoma.
The partnership targets orphan wells located in the Deep Fork and Sequoyah Refuges in Oklahoma, Hailstone in Montana, and Baskett Slough in Oregon. Each refuge faces specific site challenges, ranging from degraded soil and methane leakage to visitor safety concerns.
A broad-based strategy supports habitat restoration efforts while directly addressing environmental liabilities tied to aging fossil fuel infrastructure. The effort also underscores how charitable donations and the use of carbon offsets can fund critical remediation work.
California will see almost one-fifth of its crude-processing capacity vanish in the next 12 months as two key refineries quit the business of turning oil into fuels.
Valero Energy Corp. and Phillips 66 plan to idle a combined 284,000 barrels of daily refining capacity by this time next year, moves that will squeeze the perennially tight motor-fuels market in the most-populous US state.
While imports of Asian gasoline and fuel from other parts of the West Coast may plug some of the expected supply gap, the California market already is so delicately balanced that isolated incidents can have an outsized impact. To wit: a February fire at a PBF Energy Inc. plant near San Francisco is seen limiting fuel output until at least the fourth quarter.
The British government and Italian energy group Eni (ENI.MI) have reached an agreement for the launch of the Liverpool Bay carbon capture (CCS) project, they said on Thursday, opening the way to the construction phase for the initiative.
The government said last year it would provide funding of up to 21.7 billion pounds ($28.76 billion) over 25 years to develop CCS projects to curb emissions from industry and create new jobs in northern England.
This piece was originally published on The National Interest.
U.S. energy policy suffers from whipsaws back and forth with changes in administration. With Congress often in gridlock, administrative actions can result in big swings in policy. Policymakers should be advocates for innovation, competition, the consumer, and the taxpayer. Federal policy should open access to investment and development rather than override the decisions of industry.
Take the seesawing on energy development on federal lands, for instance. In one of his first actions, Joe Biden signed an executive order suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands and reviewing existing operations. Four years later, President Trump’s day-one executive order halted new renewable energy leasing on federal lands and waters.
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Just as previous Democratic administrations have dismissed domestic oil production as a solution to lower gas prices, policymakers should not have the hubris to assume offshore wind will always be a bad bet. The United States has favorable conditions for offshore wind development, with strong and consistent winds along much of its coastline, particularly in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and along the West Coast. These areas offer not only a steady energy source but also the possibility of generating large-scale electricity that can feed into regional grids.
Granted, there are legitimate reasons for offshore wind skepticism. It’s currently expensive and may not be built without the assistance of tax credits and state renewable portfolio standards. Making the case against any energy project on the grounds that it’s a bad bet for ratepayers and taxpayers is a more honest conversation than dismissing a technology outright. However, those decisions should be driven by market factors and price signals, not bureaucrats in Washington.
>>>READ: Drones Could Solve Offshore Wind’s Jones Act Problem
Offshore Wind’s Promise Shouldn’t Be Politicized
The reality is offshore wind could offer compelling potential benefits that make a categorical ban shortsighted and counterproductive. They harness stronger, more consistent winds than their land-based counterparts, generating clean electricity at scale while avoiding land-use conflicts. Offshore wind has a higher capacity factor than onshore wind and solar power.
Offshore wind turbines often perform better and more consistently than their onshore counterparts, generating energy day and night, even during the winter months when solar generation dips. With most of America’s population concentrated along our coasts, offshore wind provides electricity generation near demand centers. And the United States is building its supply chains. Nucor Steel, for instance, has invested $1.7 billion in a new plant in Kentucky to manufacture steel plating for turbine towers.
Policymakers must provide regulatory certainty for businesses and investors, ensuring that America remains a global leader. If the Trump administration wants to solidify America’s energy dominance, it must embrace an all-of-the-above and below approach. Prohibiting any potential viable energy technology unnecessarily restricts options in an uncertain future. Technological advancements and economies of scale can result in significant cost declines, as it has with onshore wind, solar, and batteries. But policy lags far behind the pace of the private sector.
One of President Trump’s greatest strengths is cutting red tape. That’s exactly what the entire energy sector needs—not more government-imposed barriers. By minimizing political and bureaucratic obstacles, we can expedite the adoption of innovative energy solutions that drive economic growth and environmental progress.
Market Competition Will Drive Progress
Streamlining permitting processes would reduce development timelines and associated carrying costs. Establishing clear, consistent rules for leasing federal waters would provide regulatory certainty without direct financial assistance. The Jones Act, which requires that offshore wind turbines be manufactured with American-made and crewed vessels, increases the cost and complexity of building and servicing offshore wind facilities.
>>>READ: It’s Time to Repeal the Jones Act
Energy projects shouldn’t arbitrarily be closed off by government dictate, but they shouldn’t be endlessly propped up by the taxpayer, either. The solution lies in establishing a level playing field where offshore wind must compete with other energy sources on cost and performance. This approach benefits consumers while preserving the technology’s role in our energy future.
To that end, policymakers should aim to eliminate subsidies for all energy sources and technologies. Taxpayer-funded support distorts markets and shields technologies from competitive pressures that drive innovation and cost reduction. When costs don’t matter because the government guarantees returns, the incentive to improve diminishes. Businesses spend more time chasing handouts than cost reductions.
Consumers would be the ultimate beneficiaries of this approach. Rather than subsidizing higher-cost electricity, they would only pay for offshore wind when it offers comparable or better value than alternatives. This ensures that the industry develops in response to genuine market signals rather than policy directives.
The offshore wind industry itself recognizes the imperative of cost reduction. European projects have demonstrated dramatic cost declines when competitive pressures are applied. The U.S. industry must follow this path, but it can’t if policy closes the doors.
The offshore wind industry’s future should be determined by its ability to deliver affordable, reliable electricity, not by government prohibition or protection. A vibrant, competitive industry developing genuinely cost-effective projects would create jobs and economic benefits and diversify America’s energy portfolio. With growing electricity demand and concerns of rising prices and grid reliability, energy policy is too critical to politicize.
Google has announced the signing of a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) to procure renewable energy from the upcoming Fengmiao 1 wind farm in Taiwan.
The agreement marks Google’s first offshore wind PPA in Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific region. It will enable Google to secure cost-effective and carbon-free electricity to meet the increasing power demands of its data centres and offices in Taiwan.
Expected to be operational by 2027, the first phase of the Fengmiao project will play a pivotal role in promoting Taiwan’s offshore wind power development.
New research highlights a largely overlooked risk to food production systems: widespread soil contamination by heavy metals. A large-scale analysis of nearly 800,000 global soil samples found that about 17% of the world’s surface soils exceed safe thresholds for at least one toxic metal. For the agriculture sector, that’s a red flag not just for food security, but also for long-term business continuity.
Roughly 242 million hectares of cropland—around 16% of the global total—are now believed to be affected by excessive levels of metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, and cobalt. The areas most at risk align with key agricultural regions across South Asia, southern China, the Middle East, and parts of Africa and Central America. These are also regions where population growth and demand for agricultural output are highest.
This contamination isn’t just accidental. It reflects a long-term interaction between environmental conditions and human activity. Warmer climates, for instance, tend to show higher concentrations of metals in soil—especially in subtropical monsoon zones, where nearly 34% of soils exceed global safety thresholds. Meanwhile, mountainous regions demonstrate elevated risk levels due to erosion and natural metal enrichment in the bedrock.
Chinese plastics plants that buy liquefied petroleum gas are turning to the Middle East to replace tariff-hit imports from the US, disrupting global flows and reviving moribund freight rates.
The LPG buyers, seeking to swap US cargoes bought earlier with alternatives, have found that Persian Gulf producers including Saudi Aramco are able to help with those requests, according to traders.
As many as seven supertankers — or very-large gas carriers — carrying US LPG and set to arrive in China in May and June will now head to India and Southeast Asia, the traders said, asking not to be named as they’re not authorized to speak publicly. In exchange, Middle Eastern shipments meant for those buyers will be supplied to end-users in China.
The world has a plastic waste problem, and our current recycling regulatory structure is insufficient to address it. This Earth Day, let’s explore one possible way we could expand and improve our recycling system: the use of advanced or chemical recycling.
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Traditional plastic recycling is relatively straightforward. Yes, you may need to sort plastics based on the item’s recycling number. No, you can’t recycle all plastic. No, recycling isn’t a magic fix that will make the item automatically disappear. Even with those drawbacks, we can easily understand the process—the item is taken to a recycling facility where the plastic is mechanically broken down and shredded and shipped off to become new products, extending the life of some plastics, but the end use is limited. into new objects or materials, thereby extending its life.
Chemical recycling is also known as molecular recycling, advanced recycling, or non-mechanical recycling. Unlike traditional recycling, it doesn’t use machinery to break down plastic physically. Instead, it utilizes moderate heat, pressure, and solvents to break down plastics and convert them into new plastics, oils, waxes, fuels, or other products. Technologies are referred to as purification, depolymerization, or conversion.
The most widespread chemical recycling technologies are conversion processes. This use of chemical recycling turns plastic into fuel. High pressure (a process called pyrolysis) can break down a cast-off plastic object and convert it into an oil that can be used to produce other plastic products. A different application of heat and pressure (a process known as gasification) can break down the bonds in the plastic object and convert it into natural gas.
“One of the greatest strengths of chemical recycling lies in its diversity. No single technology can process all types of discarded plastics, but collectively, chemical recycling solutions can address a wide range of materials that would otherwise go to landfill or incineration,” noted chemical recycling company Alterra.
>>>READ: Maximizing Value and Minimizing Waste in a Circular Plastics Economy
To be fair, some experts also have concerns about chemical recycling. Some believe it is ineffective, while others think it’s too lengthy a process to implement these technologies in creating new plastic from old plastic options. However, there is a documented benefit that helps offset these concerns. An analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory suggests that chemically recycled plastic products have a lower greenhouse gas footprint than brand-new plastic.
Plastics are a critical input for most of the things we use and do. Addressing the waste, however, is a necessary and top priority for the industry. Recycling will never be a perfect process, and it’s essential to consider how we can minimize plastic waste in the first place. by expanding chemical recycling, we can enhance the process. This Earth Day, that’s something to celebrate.
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