When the Franco-German summit concluded in Berlin, Europe’s leaders issued a declaration with a clear ambition: strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty in an open, collaborative way. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s call for “Europe’s Independence Moment” captures the urgency, but independence isn’t declared — it’s designed. The pandemic exposed this truth. When Covid-19 struck, Europe initially scrambled for vaccines and facemasks, hampered by fragmented responses and overreliance on a few external suppliers. That vulnerability must never be repeated. True sovereignty rests on three pillars: diversity, resilience and autonomy. > True sovereignty rests on three pillars: diversity, resilience and autonomy. Diversity doesn’t mean pulling every factory back to Europe or building walls around markets. Many industries depend on expertise and resources beyond our borders. The answer is optionality, never putting all our eggs in one basket. Europe must enable choice and work with trusted partners to build capabilities. This risk-based approach ensures we’re not hostage to single suppliers or overexposed to nations that don’t share our values. Look at the energy crisis after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Europe’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas left economies vulnerable. The solution wasn’t isolation, it was diversification: boosting domestic production from alternative energy sources while sourcing from multiple markets. Optionality is power. It lets Europe pivot when shocks hit, whether in energy, technology, or raw materials. Resilience is the art of prediction. Every system inevitably has vulnerabilities. The key is pre-empting, planning, testing and knowing how to recover quickly. Just as banks undergo stress tests, Europe needs similar rigor across physical and digital infrastructure. That also means promoting interoperability between networks, redundant connectivity links (including space and subsea cables), stockpiling critical components, and contingency plans. Resilience isn’t theoretical. It’s operational readiness. Finally, Europe must exercise authority through robust frameworks, such as authorization schemes, local licensing and governance rooted in EU law. The question is how and where to apply this control. On sensitive data, for example, sovereignty means ensuring it’s held in Europe under European jurisdiction, without replacing every underlying technology component. Sovereign solutions shouldn’t shut out global players. Instead, they should guarantee that critical decisions and compliance remain under European authority. Autonomy is empowerment, limiting external interference or denial of service while keeping systems secure and accountable. But let’s be clear: Europe cannot replicate world-leading technologies, platforms or critical components overnight. While we have the talent, innovation and leading industries, Europe has fallen significantly behind in a range of key emerging technologies. > While we have the talent, innovation and leading industries, Europe has fallen > significantly behind in a range of key emerging technologies. For example, building fully European alternatives in cloud and AI would take decades and billions of euros, and even then, we’d struggle to match Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. Worse, turning inward with protectionist policies would only weaken the foundations that we now seek to strengthen. “Old wines in new bottles” — import substitution, isolationism, picking winners — won’t deliver competitiveness or security. Contrast that with the much-debated US Inflation Reduction Act. Its incentives and subsidies were open to EU companies, provided they invest locally, develop local talent and build within the US market. It’s not about flags, it’s about pragmatism: attracting global investments, creating jobs and driving innovation-led growth. So what’s the practical path? Europe must embrace ‘sovereignty done right’, weaving diversity, resilience and autonomy into the fabric of its policies. That means risk-based safeguards, strategic partnerships and investment in European capabilities while staying open to global innovation. Trusted European operators can play a key role: managing encryption, access control and critical operations within EU jurisdiction, while enabling managed access to global technologies. To avoid ‘sovereignty washing’, eligibility should be based on rigorous, transparent assessments, not blanket bans. The Berlin summit’s new working group should start with a common EU-wide framework defining levels of data, operational and technological sovereignty. Providers claiming sovereign services can use this framework to transparently demonstrate which levels they meet. Europe’s sovereignty will not come from closing doors. Sovereignty done right will come from opening the right ones, on Europe’s terms. Independence should be dynamic, not defensive — empowering innovation, securing prosperity and protecting freedoms. > Europe’s sovereignty will not come from closing doors. Sovereignty done right > will come from opening the right ones, on Europe’s terms. That’s how Europe can build resilience, competitiveness and true strategic autonomy in a vibrant global digital ecosystem.

BJOERN SEIBERT, THE POWER BEHIND QUEEN URSULA’S THRONE Von der Leyen’s chief of staff is the man to call to get things done in Brussels. But for a growing number of critics, he has too much control. By NICHOLAS VINOCUR, MAX GRIERA and NETTE NÖSTLINGER Photo-illustration by Daniel Benneworth-Gray for POLITICO He’s known as the man to call to get things done in Brussels. He leans on party bosses to exert his sway over the European Parliament. And he manages the European Commission, an institution of 32,000 employees, like an extension of his brain, watching over everything from social media posts to mid-level staff appointments. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s right-hand man, Bjoern Seibert, is the ultimate behind-the-scenes Brussels power broker. Never heard of him? That’s exactly how he likes it. At von der Leyen’s side for about a decade, the soft-spoken 45-year-old has built up a reputation as a tireless worker, astute political strategist and ruthlessly efficient operator who delivers on promises. Advertisement For top officials in Paris, Berlin and Washington, it’s a dream come true. Finally, they have someone who can pick up the phone and deliver, a huge asset at a time when Europe was being buffeted by crises. “He is incredibly influential,” said Phil Gordon, former national security adviser to Kamala Harris when she was U.S. vice president. “No one was seen as better understanding the EU and how to get things done.” Others agree, praising Seibert as “very clever” and a “strategic thinker.” “He is the most powerful official in Brussels by some distance,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe at the Eurasia Group, a think tank. OVERMIGHTY ADJUTANT More comfortable behind the scenes than in the limelight, Seibert is intensely private. Publicly known facts about him include that he is married with two children and works incredibly long hours. That’s about it. But as he embarks on his second five-year term as von der Leyen’s head of Cabinet, Seibert — at times referred to as the Commission’s unofficial “co-president” — faces increasing criticism from those who think his power has grown too large. In an interview with POLITICO in early June, the EU’s former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier lamented what he called an “authoritarian drift” in Brussels under von der Leyen and her “powerful chief of staff.” That chimes with what six current and former Commission staffers told POLITICO, namely that Seibert’s insistence on signing off on everything from the public speaking points of his commissioners to the the names of individual Cabinet picks leads to bottlenecks, delays and demoralization. In person, Seibert is a discreet if physically imposing figure — tall, a speaker of perfect English with traces of dry humor. | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA Another effect is fear. Out of the 25 EU officials, diplomats, lawmakers and experts in total we spoke to for this article, just three agreed to speak on the record and only one of those voiced any criticism. Several people cited fear of professional reprisals as their reason for wanting to remain anonymous. Others say his German conservative leanings are overbearing in a town that is already preponderantly German and conservative. They point to when Seibert insisted on backing a German conservative for a top EU business envoy post, only to see the appointment lead to a major political backlash. Still others point to his close working relationship with the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, which they say became a liability after Donald Trump’s election. “He derived a lot of his power from his direct line to the White House,” said a former Commission official. “That’s not the case anymore with Trump. Everything needs to be rebuilt.” Advertisement A Commission official pushed back on this characterization, underscoring regular continuing contacts with the White House. A spokesperson for the Commission declined to comment for this piece. Seibert himself declined to be interviewed. Other Commission officials pushed back against criticism saying he has generous time for debate — amounting to hundreds of hours, according to a tally shared with POLITICO — and that centralization has made the EU far more efficient. Bottlenecks and delays, Seibert’s defenders argue, are partly due to staffers seeking input on files where more senior direction is not necessarily warranted. But this account is disputed by others who say that only Seibert and von der Leyen can be held responsible for a system they have created. “This Commission is very hierarchical with nothing passing Bjoern without his consent,” said Bas Eickhout, co-chair of the Greens group in the European Parliament. Seibert, wearing New Balance sneakers, looks at papers while von der Leyen talks to the media at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images Indeed, Seibert isn’t the first EU civil servant to prompt fear and fascination in Brussels. Before him, there was Martin Selmayr, another German who held sway under ex-President Jean-Claude Juncker and was known as the “Monster of the Berlaymont.” But most people agreed Seibert is now the more formidable figure — a merciless T-1000 liquid metal Terminator versus the laconic, clunkier older generation T-800 model played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. “He’s far more powerful today than Selmayr ever was,” said a former French government official. I DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING Anyone seeking insight into Seibert from his personal history is in for disappointment: Little from his youth has filtered into the public domain, and a Wikipedia entry offers as many clues as a broken Babylonian tablet. In person, Seibert is a discreet if physically imposing figure — tall, a speaker of perfect English with traces of dry humor, he can be spotted in the vicinity of his boss, wearing New Balance sneakers and clutching a packet of files. He’s quieter than Selmayr, but also wields a bigger stick: One Commission official described him as a “quiet killer.” Seibert graduated with a degree in social science from Erfurt University in the eastern German state of Thuringia in 2005, per the university, then went on to pursue a string of research fellowships at U.S. academic institutions including MIT focusing mostly on defense and security. Advertisement Upon his return to Germany, he moved to the German defense ministry where he initially worked at the politics department, according to a former colleague, who also said he impressed colleagues by going against Bundeswehr orthodoxy. At the time, his ability to work seemingly inhumane hours made an impression — and helped win him promotion to the office of von der Leyen, who was then defense minister. That was the beginning of the “Bjoern and Ursula” double act that would come to rule over Brussels. An episode from 2019, after von der Leyen had been picked by EU leaders to be the next head of the Commission, reveals a key ingredient in their partnership. Seibert had been called upon to testify in front of an investigative committee of the German parliament looking into how lucrative contracts from the defense ministry while von der Leyen was in charge were awarded to outside consultants without proper oversight, and whether a network of informal personal connections facilitated those deals. At the center of the committee’s investigations was Katrin Suder, a former McKinsey consultant who became von der Leyen’s deputy in charge of the defense ministry’s arms department. In 2014, she brought Seibert into her department, quickly promoted him to be her chief of staff and later recommended him to do the same job for their common boss, von der Leyen. His performance before the investigative committee would have pleased the most demanding of mafia bosses. “Seibert declared in an endless loop that he could not remember anything, absolutely nothing,” according to a German media account of his performance from the time. ‘HIS RESPONSIBILITY’ Seibert’s loyalty would soon be tested again. After von der Leyen won the nod from EU leaders to become Commission president, she needed a two-thirds majority in the European Parliament to be confirmed in the role. Normally, the task of cobbling together a majority would fall to Manfred Weber, a powerful German conservative who oversees the umbrella group of center-right European parties. But Weber was licking his wounds from having been passed up for the top EU job in favor of von der Leyen. So the task fell to Seibert who, despite having no experience as a political operator, managed to pull off a nine-vote majority for von der Leyen by reaching outside the normal circle of so-called governing parties to the right-wing populists. It was thanks to Seibert’s “significant contribution” that von der Leyen was confirmed, a German colleague said at the time. Seibert isn’t the first EU civil servant to prompt fear and fascination in Brussels. | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA Once installed at the Commission, the pair faced a wall of skepticism. “When the Commission started there was lots of skepticism about whether von der Leyen and Bjoern would be able to control the institution, as they didn’t know how it worked,” a former French official said. “They disproved this within days.” Seibert, in particular, impressed counterparts. “He was exceptionally well-prepared,” the same official said. “He would always show he knew exactly what was going on in French politics. It was clear that this was someone you could trust, but who is also about control, about power.” Working in a tight unit with a small cadre of mainly German-speaking advisers, von der Leyen and Seibert used the Covid-19 pandemic to consolidate power. When the time came to negotiate vaccine contracts, they split the work among several sections of the Commission, giving Single Market Commissioner Thierry Breton oversight of vaccine supply chains. Advertisement But the negotiation of contracts itself was given to Sandra Gallina, a senior health official in the Commission. In reality, according to two former Commission officials, it was Seibert and von der Leyen who steered negotiations, culminating in the president’s December 2020 announcement of a deal to buy millions of doses of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech and a subsequent New York Times interview in which she said she’d agreed on the deal via text message exchange with Pfizer’s chief executive. In the ensuing “Pfizergate” scandal, von der Leyen faced criticism — and a judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union — for having failed to conserve the messages. But some of that criticism should have been directed at Seibert, the former officials said. “It was his responsibility,” said one of the two ex-officials. “He is the reason for monumental mistakes committed by his president.” A spokesperson for the Commission declined to comment. LOYAL TO A FAULT Loyalty would once again come into play in the final months of von der Leyen and Seibert’s first Commission term. As von der Leyen prepared for a reelection bid (with Seibert as her campaign manager), their decision to nominate a German conservative loyalist to the role of EU envoy for small and medium businesses sparked a revolt. Four commissioners, including Breton, questioned the decision to nominate Markus Pieper over two women who had reportedly scored higher in the selection process. Advertisement Two former officials recall that Seibert had defended the nomination internally, saying he had “no flexibility” in the matter. That argument didn’t go down well. The leadership duo would end up having to retract Pieper’s nomination. Critics argued that the episode underscored a lack of political sensitivity, as Seibert had failed to anticipate the blowback which came primarily from Breton along with then-top diplomat Josep Borrell; Luxembourgish Socialist ex-Commissioner Nicolas Schmit and Italian Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni. “The problem is a lack of management experience,” the same former official said. “It leads to a tendency to do things in an authoritarian way.” EVERYTHING GOES THROUGH BJOERN Von der Leyen and Seibert had learned their lesson. When it was time to choose commissioners after von der Leyen was reelected in 2024, they forced out the rebellious Breton and stocked the College with less-experienced candidates. Here again, Seibert was on the front line, negotiating with political bosses in the European Parliament who needed to sign off on nominations during hearings. One senior Parliament official described Seibert as someone who is “very professional” but also quick to use pressure when things aren’t going his way. “I’m noticing more and more that he doesn’t deal well with contradiction … He is not used to be contradicted in this sense.” Once the hearings were over, Seibert got to work name-checking nominations of individual Cabinet members based on criteria of gender and nationality. Each commissioner had to send their list of Cabinet picks to the 13th floor, where the president’s chief of staff would personally approve or reject the names. Seibert, behind the table, listens to von der Leyen speak to commissioners-designate in September 2024. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images “This is a taste of the Seibert style,” said a current senior Commission official who pointed out that Seibert was the first head of Cabinet to have his name posted on a panel, right below the president’s name, in front of the elevator on the Berlaymont’s 13th floor. “He is not leaving anything to chance.” Since then, Seibert’s grip on power in the Commission has only tightened further. A case in point: the recent restructuring of the Commission’s Secretary General office, planned and submitted for approval in January. A green light came three months later not due to any problem but because Seibert hadn’t been able to look at it yet. A Cabinet member of a European prime minister quipped: “I know that he is a guy who does not know how to delegate, and that this inability to delegate and obsession to co-govern the commission with Ursula has caused bottlenecks and frustrations in the cabinets.” MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY In other cases, critics chafed at Seibert’s tendency to steamroll opposition. A senior Parliament official echoed the concern about Seibert’s power: “He’s in such a stage of full power that he speaks directly with the commissioners. He speaks directly with politicians. He is forgetting a little bit what his place is.” Even as he wields his power in Brussels, Seibert now has to rebuild his relationship with Washington. Identified as “Biden’s man” due to his relationship with ex-national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Seibert played a key role in building the tightest transatlantic relationship in decades. Advertisement He and Sullivan would issue joint communiqués and worked in lockstep on rolling out sanctions against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When Biden’s announcement of the Inflation Reduction Act threatened to fray ties between Brussels and Washington, it was Seibert’s behind-the-scenes diplomacy with the White House that led to a rare Rose Garden joint press conference by von der Leyen and Biden, according to a former high-ranking Commission official. But this closeness hasn’t helped Seibert under Trump, who refused to speak to von der Leyen or any other EU official for months after his election. Seibert has recently accompanied top trade negotiator Maroš Šefčovič on negotiation trips to Washington D.C., but any hint of the old special relationship appears to be gone as Europe faces sky-high tariffs. The Commission’s approach has been to tread carefully to avoid irking Trump, avoiding action — such as imposing a fine on Elon Musk’s X for violating the Digital Services Act — that might prompt a furious tweet or sudden retaliation. Seibert’s reputation reflects the town he lives in: bureaucratic, power-mad, largely opaque. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images But this approach, which now includes potential far-reaching concessions on Europe’s digital rulebook to clinch a trade deal, is undermining European sovereignty, according to critics who say the EU should defend its rules no matter the cost. “This is all due to fear: fear of offending the Americans,” the former official said. A Commission official who declined to be named underscored what they called regular contacts between Seibert and members of the Trump administration as well as in-person engagement, including Seibert’s trips to Washington. FEAR OF THE BEAR All in all, Seibert’s reputation reflects the town he lives in: bureaucratic, power-mad, largely opaque. It generates myths around powerful civil servants who operate in the shadows, first Selmayr, now Seibert. Few people interviewed for this piece voiced serious alarm about Seibert’s influence. But it’s telling that only one person out of 25 — a Dutch lawmaker no less — was willing to share a critical thought on record.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump wants to beat China in just about every market — but he’d rather take the loss on clean energy. In his second term, the U.S. president has returned more committed than ever to promoting fossil fuels and crushing clean, renewable power sources that don’t burn the planet. Trump’s view is that China has already won the clean energy race, due in part to practices such as forced labor, massive subsidies and intellectual property theft. Trying to compete with Beijing would just make the United States the loser. The president wants the U.S. to focus on energy sources it already dominates, including oil, natural gas and coal. That represents a complete break from Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, who sought to go toe-to-toe with China in a race for clean energy dominance. Not only that, it contrasts with Trump’s first term, when the White House took an all-you-can-eat-buffet approach to energy and clean power.  The new stance could present America’s competitors with a multibillion-dollar opportunity. And in Washington, it’s opening up a fundamental divide within Trump’s Republican Party as it works through spending talks. “The second administration is really not about taking half-measures,” said Daniel Simmons, who ran the Energy Department’s energy efficiency and renewable energy office in Trump’s first term. “To all appearances, it is not a battlefield that they care about.” GOP FISSURES Not all Republicans are ready to let China, Europe and other nations win the clean energy race by default.  That intra-GOP division is boiling underneath one of the biggest political controversies in Washington right now: the complicated passage of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending megabill. Hard-line conservatives are demanding that the bill include a wholesale gutting of hundreds of billions of dollars in Biden-era clean energy tax incentives, which were aimed at juicing U.S. competitors to Chinese and European manufacturers.  That push threatens to alienate moderate Republicans whose communities stand to gain from factories and other projects enabled by the tax breaks — and who had hoped they could win Trump to their side by framing the incentives as the key to edging out China. The message they’ve gotten instead: When it comes to winning on clean energy, Trump just isn’t interested. Trump’s Energy Department confirmed as much in a statement to POLITICO that focused largely on oil — an energy source that the U.S. produces more of than any other country. Trump officials have argued that putting any money into green technology boosts China, which dominates major slices of the global battery, electric vehicle, solar and wind energy supply chains. | Olivier Matthys/EFE via EPA “Thanks to President Trump, America is leading the way in lowering costs by removing red tape and unleashing affordable, abundant, and reliable American energy,” the department said Friday. “As the world’s largest oil producer, the United States welcomes a secure and stable global supply of oil that promotes economic prosperity at home and promotes peace and stability around the world.” The White House referred questions about its clean energy worldview to the Energy Department. DRILLING TO BEAT CHINA? Trump officials have argued that putting any money into green technology boosts China, which dominates major slices of the global battery, electric vehicle, solar and wind energy supply chains.  Trump’s zero-sum assessment of the clean energy market has forged an energy strategy even more reliant on fossil fuels than he pursued in his first term. Following this approach would jeopardize a U.S. clean energy manufacturing industry that is just beginning to sprout — and, green tech advocates say, all but ensure that China will command the global sector. That vision is coming to a head in Congress, where Republicans are working to slash the clean energy incentives created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. While not proposing to erase the tax breaks altogether, GOP lawmakers in the House have floated tight restrictions outlawing Chinese sourcing in the supply chains of energy projects. Those limits would render most of the tax credits unusable for projects that have not yet been built, effectively squelching the nascent U.S. clean manufacturing sector. The changes remain in limbo as part of the broader budget reconciliation bill, the legislative vehicle for green-lighting Republicans’ and Trump’s policy agenda that can pass with a simple majority vote in Congress. House Republicans are trying to forge a compromise among fiscal conservatives and blocs of GOP lawmakers that want to preserve clean energy credits and raise tax deduction caps for state and local taxes.    Trump’s presence looms over the negotiations. He has repeatedly vowed to end Biden’s programs — the nation’s largest-ever investment in clean energy and fighting climate change — while labeling them the “green new scam.” Cutting many of those policies, such as consumer credits to purchase electric vehicles, would fund a small portion of his administration’s other priorities, including trillions of dollars in tax breaks. “They don’t see climate change as a problem,” George David Banks, who ran Trump’s first-term climate portfolio, said of the current team’s outlook. He added: “They don’t want to essentially create a jobs program for China.” Defenders of the IRA tax credits say wiping them out would wipe out an American jobs program, one whose benefits would flow to heavily Republican communities as well as Democratic strongholds. Private sector manufacturing projects seizing on Biden’s incentives had been projected to create roughly 160,000 jobs, according to analyses published late last year. Overturning the subsidies would eliminate a potential U.S. export market for solar modules and batteries that could be worth as much as $50 billion by 2030, according to another analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Other countries would fill an $80 billion investment gap left by shuttered U.S. solar facilities, electric vehicle shops and battery gigafactories.  Many countries stand to benefit from the U.S. vacating the space, the Johns Hopkins researchers wrote. But governments outside the U.S. would face risks as well: Those that fail to encourage cleantech investments at home may fall even further behind China, which would likely benefit in every industrial category.  The researchers also raised the prospect of a transition of intellectual property to China. As U.S. businesses shuttered, they said, foreign companies could purchase their technical knowledge at fire-sale prices. Donald Trump’s barrage of tariffs against nations worldwide would limit some of the advantage countries could gain by selling clean technology to the U.S., said Tim Sahay, one of the authors of the study. | Jim Lo Scalzo/EFE via EPA Trump’s barrage of tariffs against nations worldwide would limit some of the advantage countries could gain by selling clean technology to the U.S., said Tim Sahay, one of the authors of the study. Still, he said, the upshot from Trump’s policies was clear — including for European allies that had erupted in fury over Biden’s use of protectionist tax breaks to move clean energy manufacturing to the United States.  “China would be the biggest winner, but not the only winner … The rest of the world wins,” Sahay said. It’s “basically the IRA in reverse. When the IRA passed, foreigners were like, ‘Oh my God, Americans are stealing our jobs and investments because of their superior fiscal space.’ Well, now the IRA is gone, then foreigners are like, ‘Well, more for us.’” Some conservative clean energy supporters still hope they can persuade Trump to back tax credits that have yielded solar manufacturing and battery-making plants across Republican strongholds in the Sun Belt and Rust Belt.  Those advocates criticized the IRA for being too lenient in allowing Chinese content into the supply chains of products receiving the tax incentives. But they believe Trump would bless tweaks that tighten foreign content requirements to retain incentives that support blue-collar jobs in the U.S. “There’s an enormous and rapidly growing market for low-carbon technologies around the world, and right now the U.S. is a secondary player,” said Greg Bertelsen, CEO of the Cleaner Economy Coalition, a business advocacy organization that promotes low-carbon manufacturing at the state and federal level. “There’s a recognition within the Trump administration that we need to be competing in these markets for these technologies.” TRUMPISM ON THE ROAD Trump officials have been making a very different case. Last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright flew to Eastern Europe to propose that ministers from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and other regional governments join “Team Energy Freedom,” urging them to embrace oil, gas and nuclear energy and reject what he framed as climate dogma.  “Climate alarmism has reduced freedom, prosperity and national security,” he said, adding — in language that carried a particular charge addressed to former communist bloc countries — that it may be a Trojan horse to “grow centralization and re-establish top-down control.” Wright’s subordinate, Tommy Joyce, was even more blunt in telling a gathering of 60 governments in London last month that the pursuit of climate policy was a gift to Beijing. “There are no wind turbines without concessions to or coercion from China,” he said. People outside the MAGA world also acknowledge the dominance China has built over decades of developing its clean energy supply chains.  In solar, batteries, electric vehicles and to some extent wind power, “China started early. China is the biggest,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. In solar, batteries, electric vehicles and to some extent wind power, “China started early. China is the biggest,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. | Wu Hao/EFE via EPA These are the core clean technologies the world is going to need en masse in the coming decades as it shifts toward a cleaner energy system. And in all of these fields, Li said, “the Chinese lead is significant and irreversible.”  In the past months, for example, two rival Chinese companies — BYD and CATL — made potentially game-changing claims in announcing they had developed electric vehicle batteries that could get 400 or even 500 kilometers (roughly 250 to 310 miles) from just a five-minute charge. By contrast, Tesla boasts that its “superchargers” can give drivers around 320 kilometers in about 15 minutes.  Republican proposals would also hamstring some clean energy technologies that the Trump administration has touted, such as next-generation nuclear, fusion and geothermal power, according to an analysis by the research firm Rhodium Group. The proposed tweaks to subsidies would essentially eliminate the long-term price signals that early-stage technologies covet, eroding their business case. Beyond that, the administration’s massive spending and job cuts across federal agencies and science research threaten to constrain U.S. innovation.  Rather than focusing on clean energy technologies such as batteries and EVs, the Trump administration has so far made critical minerals the forefront of its strategy to combat China, said a State Department official who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media. Those efforts focus on extracting and processing raw materials rather than supporting value-added industries like battery-making or electric vehicles.  The official said the administration’s opposition to subsidies for green technology doesn’t mean it opposes the technologies writ large — apart from wind energy, which Trump has made clear for years that he despises. AMERICA ALONE Apart from the current U.S. government, no other major power has determined that China’s dominance means that action to fight climate change needs to take a back seat. The Biden administration’s argument, one still being pursued in Europe, was that a targeted industrial strategy could claw back some share of those industries. Those strategies have often come cloaked in pledges to make this country or that country a “clean energy superpower.” But Li said there was a danger of “making too big of a promise. A promise that cannot be entirely fulfilled.”  Li said he had long feared that a U.S. president would someday ask: If China’s lead is so big, “then why do we play the game?” That is the conclusion being drawn in the White House during Trump’s second term. And it helps explain why the administration has broken so radically with past U.S. policy, shut down government funding for future projects, kneecapped agencies that deal with clean energy, and reversed regulations. “What has surprised me is the extent to which the administration hasn’t just pursued an agenda but has thrown sand in the gears of the parts of the agenda that they don’t agree with,” said Thom Woodroofe, a former Australian diplomat in Washington who now works at the Smart Energy Council. “Even when it costs American jobs.” Zack Colman reported from Washington and Karl Mathiesen reported from London.

President Donald Trump’s promised assault on federal climate policies is sweeping across Washington, state capitals and private industry with a speed that’s surprising even some of his supporters and critics — and could leave an impact on the planet’s future well after his presidency. His cost-cutting orders have led to the firings of thousands of people from the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Energy and the Interior, with even deeper slashing on the way. He’s dammed the flow of billions of federal dollars for energy rebates, low-income solar installations, electric vehicle chargers and more — sometimes flouting courts that ordered the money reinstated. And he has cast uncertainty over clean energy industries by threatening tariffs on allied nations, pausing permits for wind projects and promising to roll back hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax credits contained in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Taken together, Trump’s actions mark a vast and coordinated attack on U.S. environmental policy by a president who has spent years denying the tenets of climate science and the reality of rising global temperatures. Analysts and advocates say the administration’s moves threaten to reverse decades of painfully slow progress to curb planet-warming pollution. “This shock and awe campaign will undo decades of bipartisan and international efforts to curb greenhouse gases and, if left unchecked, will lead to the planet warming far beyond manageable levels,” said Jillian Blanchard, who runs the climate change program at Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit watchdog group. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But Energy Secretary Chris Wright expressed the administration’s view of climate change this week when he described efforts to zero out greenhouse gases as a malevolent goal of governments to acquire power. “Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal,” Wright told conservative leaders attending a conference in London. “It’s a terrible goal. It’s both unachievable by any practical means, but the aggressive pursuit of it — and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal — has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.” The United States, and the world, were already on the clock when Trump won a second term in November. At current pollution levels, the planet has six years before the industrial-era rise in global temperatures eclipses the crucial threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and 27 years before it breaches the even more serious benchmark of 2 degrees, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international team composed of climate researchers. Trump left little mystery about his intentions during the presidential campaign, railing against electric vehicles, wind turbines and what he called Biden’s “Green New Scam” at rally after rally. He has long ridiculed climate science, joking last year that rising temperatures would lead to more oceanfront property. Now he’s embedding those doubts into federal action. Researchers in and out of government have been put on notice that bucking far-right orthodoxy on issues like equity and energy “dominance” could get them fired or blacklisted for grants. The reach of Trump’s actions has blown past those of his first administration — and more moves are coming. He has threatened to make the nation’s disaster response agency “go away.” EPA is expected to release a list of regulations it plans to scrap and replace with weaker standards — or no standards at all. Even EPA’s core finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health — the cornerstone of all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act — may be on the chopping block, a move that Trump avoided making in his first term. “There’s been a viciousness that I hadn’t anticipated in tearing everything down without a coherent plan for what to build back up,” said Daniel Cohan, an environmental engineering professor at Rice University. FIRINGS AND FURLOUGHS Trump entered office amid a halting and uneven effort by the U.S. to tackle climate change. Biden sought to position the U.S. as a climate leader. He approved $1 trillion in clean energy loans, grants and tax credits as part of sweeping legislative packages that included the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law. But Biden’s track record of cutting climate pollution was mixed. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 20 percent below 2005 levels when he left office last month, a far cry from the 50 to 52 percent reduction he had promised to achieve by the end of the decade. Yet Biden made progress in other areas. At the Department of Energy, Biden stood up new initiatives to bolster grid reliability, domestic manufacturing and EV charging. EPA hired more than 6,000 full-time employees to help carry out the president’s climate initiatives. In the private sector, companies that spent the past several years building factories to make solar panels and electric vehicles have only just begun to see new products roll off the line. Trump, on the other hand, empowered Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to dramatically slash the size of the federal bureaucracy through the Department of Government Efficiency. At the National Science Foundation, staff meetings are no longer recorded because civil servants fear the audio could fall into the wrong hands. Nearly 170 people were fired from NSF on Tuesday, with more layoffs on the way. At EPA, where 388 people were fired last week, civil servants have been told to cut off communication with grantees and some state officials while political leaders get up to speed. DOE was among the first to see staff cuts, starting with diversity and equity offices days after the inauguration and continuing last week as new workers were let go. Cuts then came at other agencies. The Interior Department cut 2,700 people while the Forest Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture, fired 3,400 employees. The Federal Emergency Management Agency fired 200 people and sent out a directive targeting climate programs. And when career staff can’t be sacked, they’re sometimes being reassigned to do work outside their expertise. The Justice Department assigned environmental enforcement and civil rights attorneys to work on a team devoted to punishing so-called sanctuary cities for bucking Trump’s immigration policies. “You can’t do anything in the government unless you have people who are doing it, and not just the numbers, but the quality,” said David Turk, who served as deputy Energy secretary during the Biden administration. Many of the probationary staff fired in recent days were hired from the private sector for their technical expertise. “In many ways, those are the worst people to get rid of,” Turk said. ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL TACTIC’ With a flourish of his black Sharpie, Trump affected families from New Mexico to Africa. The State Department rescinded $4 billion in pledged funding to the United Nations Green Climate Fund. The Treasury Department ditched a group that studied the financial risks of climate change because it was organized to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, of which the U.S. is no longer a part. And a host of climate-related programs at USAID have been halted or terminated amid Trump’s attempt to close the agency. They include installing solar panels on hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa, and to alert farmers in Central America of impending extreme weather events, so they can cover their crops. Programs are disappearing, whether they’re climate-related or not, said one current USAID staffer who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation. It feels like a “psychological tactic,” they said. “It’s not about aid, it’s not about what we do and it’s not about there being fraud or waste,” the person said. “It’s the narrative that we’re being sacrificed to.” At home, $8 billion in home energy rebates were thrown into limbo. New Mexico last year raced to create a rebate program using IRA funding in a bid to lower household energy costs. It will “not only do good things for the climate, but to finally move New Mexico out of the poverty that has endured for generations,” said Rebecca Stair, director of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. Now she never knows what her staff will find when they open the federal government’s online payment system. Some days the grants are there. On others, some disappear. “It seems to change every day or even every few hours,” Stair said. “So trying to operate these big, consequential programs under that much uncertainty is really an enormous challenge.” Federal workers are not the only ones losing their jobs. Small businesses and nonprofits that expected to receive IRA grants from the Department of Agriculture or EPA have begun laying off people. School districts that anticipated buying electric buses with grants are holding off for fear that they won’t be reimbursed. “Communities are paying out of pocket for work that the federal government has a legal obligation to pay in advance,” said Zealan Hoover, EPA’s IRA and infrastructure implementation lead under Biden. “Upstream orders to factories are drying up, forcing companies to pause hiring and prepare to furlough factory workers.” At the same time, the business world is anxiously awaiting details of Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imports from allied and adversarial nations alike. Those levies could snarl supply chains for green technologies and reverse falling prices for renewable energy. The business group E2 said January saw the lowest level of new large-scale clean energy investments announced since August 2022, when Biden and congressional Democrats passed the IRA. “Right now, what Washington is doing in regard to the future of clean energy in America is about as clear as a midnight snowstorm in D.C.,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, a clean energy business group. “It’s really created a self-inflicted wound to one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy.” ‘A RIDICULOUS THOUGHT’ Federal agencies and corporate boardrooms are accustomed to Washington shifting its priorities when a new president arrives. So it wasn’t a surprise when Trump pledged to work with Republican lawmakers to claw back unobligated IRA dollars or directed agencies to move swiftly to roll back regulations on fossil fuels and open public lands to drilling. It was expected that Trump would pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement — as he did in his first term. But he didn’t stop there, catching even insiders by surprise. Two weeks after the election, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) — who now chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee — told POLITICO that IRA funding can’t be taken back if it was already obligated. [T]hat’s a decision that’s final. We’re not gonna go claw back money. That’s a ridiculous thought,” said Capito, who will have a leading role in shaping budget legislation that could jettison IRA programs. What the establishment did not see coming was Trump’s blizzard of executive orders, his blitz to fire workers and the speed with which he froze federal funding. It was a multidimensional campaign to destabilize the bureaucracy — and U.S. climate policy paid a large price. Liberal states and federal unions have sued to stop the administration from razing Biden’s climate legacy. They’ve won some preliminary cases — including on the funding freeze. But those orders amount to putting a Band-Aid on an amputated limb. Meantime, the spending pause has impacted businesses large and small. A Massachusetts company said last week that it no longer planned to build a factory for making EV components after receiving a $671 million DOE grant. TotalEnergies has halted its plans for offshore wind projects in the U.S., while Orsted, the Danish wind giant, announced it is cutting spending 25 percent. In Georgia, a battery maker recently announced it was scrapping plans for a $2.5 billion facility. “What’s hard for me now is that it feels like it’s not just a situation where we’re going to let the best technology win,” said Rob Jackson, an earth systems professor at Stanford University. “We’re going to actively spite green technologies and clean energy because they’re clean and because they help climate. That, to me, is messed up.” A small electric vehicle charger startup in New York has been forced to scramble for new funding after a $1.4 million DOE grant was frozen. The freeze comes as part of a wider order to pause a $5 billion initiative supporting the build-out of EV chargers. The company, named it’s electric, was granted cost-share funding for 60 curbside EV chargers in four cities complete with workforce training. Instead of waiting on Trump, they are pushing through without federal funding. “We’re not going to fall into this trap of ‘waiting and seeing’ for this funding,” said Tiya Gordon, a co-founder of it’s electric. “We can’t sway opinion with the new administration.” ‘LIKE IT DOESN’T EXIST’ Climate researchers told POLITICO’s E&E News they have been told to self-censor their grant documents for trigger words that might lead to a loss of funding. Agencies that fund scientific research — including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation — paused review panels charged with evaluating grant proposals while they grappled with how to comply with Trump’s executive orders on diversity and environmental justice. The move alarmed scientists who depend on the agencies to support their research. NSF program officers were told to comb through existing grants to see if any were out of step with Trump’s agenda. They were given spreadsheets of grants flagged as possibly pertaining to DEI issues because they contained terms like “barrier,” according to one agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. The managers were told to look for grants that affect social topics, like barriers to education. “There is a general feeling of helplessness, confusion and anger,” said one NSF staffer. “Morale is bent.” One career scientist at USDA said they were considering taking their name off a climate-related study they led to avoid being targeted. Another option: leaving it unpublished until Trump leaves office. “I think they generally don’t want the information that we provide. They don’t want it to be available because, if it’s not, it’s like it doesn’t exist,” said Jackson, the Stanford professor. “I think people are living in fear in a way that I haven’t seen in my lifetime.” Sara Schonhardt, Chelsea Harvey, Corbin Hiar, Mike Lee, Lesley Clark, Scott Waldman and Thomas Frank contributed to this report.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The U.S. has played the powerbroker in more than 30 years of global negotiations on fighting climate change — a quest that has swept in an army of diplomats, the world’s biggest companies and every nation on Earth. The first climate summit since Donald Trump’s second White House victory underscored the volatile side of that legacy. In a 14-day conference focused on hundreds of billions of dollars in climate finance, everybody recognized that the incoming U.S. president will refuse to pay any amount the Biden administration agrees to. President Joe Biden’s emissaries helped orchestrate a multinational pledge for “ambitious” carbon-cutting, but they declined to join it. And as the U.S. prepares to recede from global leadership, much of the rest of the world is looking to China to fill the void. Trump’s upcoming presidency is the most important source of the instability on display at the COP29 summit, despite all the Biden administration’s efforts to send signals that America is still on board with the climate cause, said Carlos Fuller, Belize’s permanent representative at the United Nations. “This has become the COP of uncertainty because of that change,” Fuller told POLITICO. “Whatever the U.S. says here — now, it could be with the best intentions — will they follow through? Or will they just say, ‘I can give you everything,’ but then it means nothing?” Trump’s rise and resurgent far-right political movements across Europe were just one of many shadows over the climate talks that ended early Sunday, held in the capital city of oil-rich Azerbaijan. Saudi resistance torpedoed any effort to end the summit with a call to move away from fossil fuels — never mind that a pledge to do just that was the supposedly triumphant achievement of the last climate summit less than a year ago. All the while, scientific evidence mounted that the Earth’s temperatures are rising toward catastrophic levels. “The worst part is the unpredictability,” Brazilian climate chief Ana Toni told POLITICO. “The whole world says that on finance, on policy, we need a roadmap, we need predictability. “And then,” she added, “you have the U.S. going in and out.” Here are key takeaways from this year’s climate talks, and what they bode for what’s next: HOPES FOR MEETING AMBITIOUS TEMPERATURE TARGETS ARE A BUST COP29 began with inauspicious news: The World Meteorological Organization said that this year would eclipse 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming since the pre-industrial age for the first time. The mark, which set a record for the modern era, is in some ways symbolic: Crossing that threshold for one year is less dire than doing so over a 30-year climatological timescale, the point at which catastrophic effects of warming — runaway ice melt, heatwaves and droughts that make parts of the world virtually uninhabitable, and rising seas that swallow low-lying lands and islands — would become irreversible. Still, the milestone showed that the world is most likely heading past 1.5 degrees for the long haul, despite nearly a decade of vows by world leaders to avert it. Even before Trump takes office, the U.S. is already on track to miss Biden’s target of halving its greenhouse gas pollution during this decade, relative to 2005 levels. Trump’s policies, which include vows to leave the 2015 Paris climate agreement, unwind Biden’s climate law, reverse vehicle fuel economy standards and pump more oil and gas, would throttle the pace of emissions reductions and global cooperation. Some nations at COP29 echoed Trump’s approach. Populist Argentine President Javier Milei openly flirted with exiting the Paris pact, while Saudi Arabia blocked attempts to restate last year’s fossil fuel pledge. The U.S., meanwhile, declined to join a coalition including the European Union, Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and Norway that promised during the conference to embrace “ambitious” new climate plans by early next year. U.S. officials did not explain their absence from the effort, even though the Biden administration had helped orchestrate the pledge. Broadly, nations arrived unwilling to move from their “red lines” on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, said South African Environmental Minister Dion George, who co-chaired that negotiating track. He said the U.S. was more “subdued” when “normally they talk a lot.” Taking hardened positions is “not in anybody’s interest, frankly, but I think that’s a reflection of where we are heading in the world,” he told POLITICO. “What’s required in this type of environment where we are seeing very interesting geopolitical shifts: Leadership is required. And bravery. And I’m not seeing much of it.” SHOW ME THE MONEY (ONCE DEMS ARE BACK IN POWER) The summit’s most contentious issue involved how much money wealthy nations would offer poorer countries to help them cope with climate disasters while moving their economies toward clean energy. Factions arrived poles apart — with some rich countries pushing for $200 billion in climate financing each year for the next decade, even though studies indicate the real need is more than $1 trillion a year. An independent analysis by finance experts said developing nations needed $300 billion per year of public, mostly grant-based funding that charges little or no interest, plus a total of $1 trillion annually provided by other sources such as the private sector. Senior U.S. officials acknowledged that the looming four years of Trump 2.0 and at least two years of full Republican control of Congress moderated how much climate finance the United States could expect to deliver. Instead, they sought to craft a deal that a future, climate-friendly administration could meet. The summit ended with a call for at least $300 billion in annual finance, which representatives of developing countries called insufficient to meet their needs. “The U.S. elections and many other geopolitical events have changed what [the rich countries] could have provided,” said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a coalition of island states. Trump and congressional Republicans zeroed out climate finance during the president-elect’s first term. Biden spent four years slowly rebuilding those U.S. efforts, hitting $11.4 billion this year and achieving its goal of quadrupling 2016 levels. But the pendulum will almost certainly swing back. While Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment on the finance talks, the president-elect has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax designed to weaken the United States, and he has put Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of an effort to find trillions of dollars in cuts from government spending. At the same time, the U.S. took part in a contentious meeting among major economic powers early Saturday, after which it joined Australia and European countries in agreeing to set the number at $300 billion a year. One European negotiator criticized the U.S. positioning, saying the Americans “behaved as if they have got more influence than they have when they have only got weeks left in power.” The emergence of Trump in the U.S. and European leaders who complained of fiscal constraints in their capitals led to “a lot of posturing” and blame shifting on finance, said Ruleta Camacho-Thomas, Antigua and Barbuda’s climate ambassador. “There’s a lot of waiting and seeing what the other country will do and what the other group of countries will do: ‘But if these people are not doing this, then I can’t do that,’” she said. “That is global politicking. And this is about survival for us.” As wide as the divide on climate was, Trump’s emergence made it more important to not let COP29 fall to pieces, one European diplomat said. “The developing countries are now saying that it is better to have no agreement than a bad one,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks. “Normally that is true but in this case, with the upcoming presidency in the U.S., it should be crucial for them to have an agreement now.” CHINA IS ASCENDANT The U.S. receding under Trump amid his likely withdrawal from the Paris Agreement make room for China to take over the global climate leadership role. But how China will lead is a major question. Beijing’s massive subsidies for its clean energy technology have reduced costs for developing nations’ green transitions, yet its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure lending program has saddled those countries with onerous debt. While reports show China’s greenhouse gas pollution may have peaked, it is still by far the world’s top driver of climate change. Accelerating China’s carbon-cutting is key for staying below 1.5 degrees, but it’s still building more coal-fired power plants. China also routinely resists pleas for transparency for its pollution-cutting measures. The same is true on climate finance. “China is a bit complex, but at the same time, we do see leadership from China,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director with the environmental group Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. Trump’s rise will likely give China more of the global market, clean energy analysts have said. Ending Biden’s consumer incentives for buying electric cars, which Republicans have targeted, and subsidies for making batteries, solar panels and wind turbines would curtail burgeoning U.S. efforts to compete in realms that China dominates. China has also led a backlash against efforts by the U.S. and other wealthy nations to impose industrial policies that would blunt China’s stranglehold over key raw materials and technologies for green energy. It has prodded emerging economies to criticize policies such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and and the EU’s carbon border tariff, arguing they make greening their economies more expensive. At COP29, Trump’s impending return to power gave the U.S. less leverage to corral China into making compulsory contributions to the finance goals. China — which has the world’s second-largest economy — hung onto a 1992 U.N. determination that it is poor enough to avoid paying into those efforts, though the final agreement leaves the door open for countries that have since grown wealthier to make commitments if they desire. China, however, sought to disarm criticism when it for the first time offered a figure for the amount of finance it has provided to other nations through its long-touted “South-South Cooperation.” The total is $25 billion since 2016, the Chinese said. Zia Weise contributed to this report.

One of President Joe Biden’s signature climate initiatives is on the clock. The Department of Energy is racing to close $25 billion in pending loans to businesses building major clean energy projects across the country. The push is one of Biden’s last chances to cement his climate legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year under the promise of shredding Democratic spending programs. The department’s Loan Programs Office emerged as one of Biden’s most potentially powerful tools for greening the economy, making billion-dollar deals to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan, fund lithium mining in Nevada, and build factories for churning out electric vehicle components in Ohio and Tennessee. But it faces an uncertain future under Trump, who as president backed only one project under the program and proposed slashing the office’s budget. And Trump’s recent pick to lead DOE, Chris Wright, is a fracking executive who has criticized the use of “large government subsidies and mandates.” That sets up a high-wire act in the closing weeks of Biden’s presidency — both for DOE and for energy companies seeking a financial lifeline from Washington. Of the 29 loans and loan guarantees the administration has announced, 16 have yet to be completed. They include $9.2 billion for an EV battery project in Kentucky and Tennessee, a $1.5 billion guarantee for sustainable aviation fuel production in South Dakota, and $1 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide. “There’s nothing like seeing your own coffin to get you moving faster,” said Andy Marsh, president and CEO of the hydrogen company Plug Power, which hopes to close a $1.7 billion loan from DOE. Plug Power produces electrolyzers and other components needed to make hydrogen from electricity, a zero-emissions source of energy that could take a hit under Trump. The DOE loan would provide funding to help the company build up to six “green hydrogen” plants. Marsh said he’s aiming to lock in the loan guarantee “before Jan. 20th” — when Trump will be inaugurated. “We know that it’s in our best interest to have that resolved by then,” he said. The pending loans, some of which were announced almost two years ago, preview a potential fight under Trump: pitting efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese imports against Republicans’ desire to cut spending. The loans stem from Biden’s wider effort to spur a green building boom to erode China’s clean energy dominance and slash planet-warming pollution. Twelve pending loans and loan guarantees worth a combined $21 billion are in Republican congressional districts, according to a POLITICO review. The department also has a pile of 210 active applications, totaling $303.5 billion, as of October. The office recently adjusted its estimated remaining loan authority to nearly $400 billion across several programs — leaving hundreds of billions of dollars available for the incoming Trump administration should it seek to use the office. “First question you ask, what’s obligated, what’s not obligated,” said Mark Menezes, who served as deputy Energy secretary during Trump’s first term, referring to committed financing that would be harder for the future president to cancel. He anticipates that the Biden team will try to close the loans in the coming weeks. “It’s easier to explain a finalized loan and what it is being used for, as opposed to a conditional loan,” Menezes said. “What’s holding it up? Why isn’t it getting across the finish line? Those are fair questions.” Other former staffers of the lending office expect the administration to expedite the completion of loans in the waning weeks of Biden’s presidency. “For the projects that are ready, it would probably do them well to prioritize the projects that they want to move forward that they don’t think a Trump administration would,” said Kennedy Nickerson, a former policy adviser at the loan office who is now a vice president of energy at Capstone, an investment research firm. Brendan Bell, chief operating officer at Aligned Climate Capital and former director of strategic initiatives at the loans office under former President Barack Obama, predicted that the Biden administration will “work to the wire” to close its conditional commitments. “I don’t expect their work to stop. But then the real question is, what happens after that?” he said. ‘WE ARE SCARED ABOUT IT’ The Loan Programs Office was established in 2005 to provide funding for emerging energy technologies that have difficulty attracting private capital. It had some notable successes. The office awarded $465 million to Tesla Motors in 2010, helping to turn Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company into an industry giant. Musk, a prominent Trump supporter during the campaign, will have a role in the new administration giving him authority to propose deep cuts to federal spending and the government workforce. But the program is perhaps best known for a loan guarantee that failed. In 2009, the office backed a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that later went bankrupt. Republicans lambasted the program as an example of wasteful liberal spending. Loans slowed to a trickle. Later, the first Trump administration closed one deal through the office, guaranteeing $3.7 billion in financing for the construction of a nuclear reactor in Georgia. Menezes, who was deputy Energy secretary at the time, said the Trump administration tried to advance several other loans, only to be met by internal resistance from career staffers who were unsettled by the Solyndra experience. The loan office has been anything but sleepy under Biden. He tapped Jigar Shah, a prominent clean energy entrepreneur who co-hosted a popular energy podcast, to lead the office. Shah quickly became a leading voice for the administration on energy issues, talking up the department’s ability to confront the so-called valley of death that prevented cutting-edge companies from obtaining private financing. Earlier this year, Time magazine named Shah one of the 100 most influential people of 2024. “The Biden administration had a completely different view of the LPO, and when they came in they took some structural moves that made the office more responsive to loan applications,” Menezes said. “The department has changed significantly since the time we were over there.” Shah, in a tweet this week, highlighted how DOE has transformed under Biden to become “a commercialization engine.” Altogether, the office has announced roughly $37 billion in loans or loan guarantees for 29 projects during Biden’s tenure. It has finalized financing for 12 of them, worth roughly $12 billion. Two of them were completed after the election. Another 16 projects have received conditional commitments for loans or guarantees worth just over $25 billion — an amount the administration is racing to finish before Biden leaves office. An additional project that received a conditional award is listed as inactive. The incoming Trump administration could rip up unfinished loans or put a moratorium on further action, some proponents of the office fear. “We are scared about it,” said Nalin Gupta, founder and CEO of Wabash Valley Resources, which received a conditional commitment for a nearly $1.6 billion loan guarantee in September to install a carbon capture and sequestration system on an ammonia facility at the site of a former coal plant in Indiana. The project — which supports a technology long embraced by Republicans — underwent initial review during Trump’s first term, giving the company some confidence the loan would be approved under the future White House. But Gupta added: “We have been on this journey for eight years, and we just got our conditional approval. We were almost celebrating, but I’ve learned each time I celebrate it lasts for this long before something comes up.” ‘WITHIN OUR CONTROL’ The first Trump administration sought to slash the office’s budget. And Project 2025 — the conservative road map that Trump tried to distance himself from before the election — has called for halting new loans and eventually eliminating the office. Analysts said it is unclear how Trump would approach the office. His administration could take a favorable view of loans for long-standing Republican priorities such as carbon capture, as well as projects that reduce dependency on China, they said. But Trump has vowed to make deep cuts to federal spending through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to be led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate and pharmaceutical entrepreneur. “Too much bureaucracy = less innovation & higher costs,” Ramaswamy said Friday on X, pointing to “countless 3-letter agencies.” “They are utterly agnostic to how their daily decisions stifle new inventions & impose costs that deter growth,” he added. Wright, Trump’s pick to lead DOE, has argued there is “no energy transition happening now,” and his company published a 180-page report this year asserting that tax credits and expenditures under the Democrats’ climate law would reduce investment in other areas. “We cannot let the Inflation Reduction Act enfeeble our energy system,” the paper said. Wright has backed low-carbon technologies like geothermal and nuclear. His company, Liberty Energy, is partnering on a geothermal project with Fervo Energy and a next-generation nuclear project with Oklo, which designs small modular reactors. Shah highlighted how the loan office and other DOE programs would finance geothermal and nuclear energy. “At the end of the day, the secretary of Energy signs off on these loans,” said Bell, who worked in the loan office under Obama. In a note to clients, the consultancy Capstone said deals under the office that have attracted Republican criticism or that have ties to Chinese companies are most at risk of not succeeding. It listed the $1.7 billion loan to Plug Power, a $1 billion loan to EVgo for EV charging infrastructure and an $850 million loan to KORE Power for battery manufacturing in Arizona as being in jeopardy. Plug Power has attracted criticism from Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, for its relationship with Shah. Shah was working at Generate Capital in 2019 when the clean energy investment firm lent $100 million to Plug Power. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, said in a statement that Trump was elected with a mandate to deliver on his campaign promises. Trump repeatedly called for cutting Biden’s climate and energy policies, including rescinding unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. The law created a new program under the LPO and provided it with about $11.7 billion in funding. The Biden administration signaled that it won’t let the loans die without a fight. A DOE spokesperson pointed to the office’s efforts to advance projects on nuclear energy, carbon capture and critical minerals, noting that they have bipartisan appeal. “There is steel in the ground and job openings at new or expanded facilities around the country,” Jeremy Ortiz said in a statement. “It would be irresponsible for any government to turn its back on private sector partners, states, and communities that are benefiting from lower energy costs and new economic opportunities spurred by LPO’s investments.” Many business executives have sought to project confidence that their projects will be completed before Trump arrives. EVgo CEO Badar Khan told investors he doesn’t expect “a lengthy process to close the loan.” “The conditions are at this point largely within our control,” Khan added. Mallory Cooke, a spokesperson for BlueOval SK, which received a $9.2 billion conditional loan commitment to help build battery factories in Kentucky and Tennessee, said the consortium is “working with our partners at the Department of Energy on final loan approval and will share details upon conclusion of that process.” The project is expected to start producing EV batteries in 2025, Cooke said. Eos Energy Enterprises, meanwhile, has made “significant progress” toward closing a $398 million loan for a battery factory outside Pittsburgh, CEO Joe Mastrangelo told investors recently. The loans office has picked up the pace in recent months. Of the 12 loans finalized by the office under Biden, seven have been completed since September. The office has continued to announce new conditional commitments. In October alone, it announced conditional deals for the sustainable aviation producer Gevo ($1.46 billion), the low-carbon fuels maker Montana Renewables ($1.44 billion) and the battery component maker Aspen Aerogels ($671 million), as well as the $1.05 billion for EVgo. The Loan Programs Office has shown it can move fast. The first loan closed by the Biden administration, a $504 million deal for a hydrogen production and storage facility in Utah, was completed 43 days after the conditional deal was announced. But the average loan took 221 days between the conditional and final announcements. Some of the pending deals have lingered for years. Monolith Nebraska has been waiting for nearly three years on a $1.04 billion loan guarantee for a clean hydrogen production facility in Nebraska. Redwood Materials has waited almost two years on a $2 billion loan for a battery recycling and production facility in Nevada. The developers of Rhyolite Ridge have been waiting for almost two years for a $700 million loan for a lithium and boron mine in Nevada. All three companies declined to comment or didn’t respond to inquiries. But in October, Bernard Rowe, managing partner of Ioneer, the company behind Rhyolite Ridge, told POLITICO that he’s “not concerned about whether or not we’ll get there.” The loan was contingent on the company receiving an environmental permit for the mine, he said. The project received its permit shortly thereafter. Developers of projects in the pipeline hope Trump will take a different approach than he did during his first term — particularly because most of the projects are in GOP districts. “It’d be really hard for them to just sit on 200 applications worth $300-plus billion and not have anybody with really good ties to the Republican Party make a stink about it,” said Nickerson, the Capstone analyst. Geography is likely to be an important factor in the Trump administration’s considerations, said Heather Reams, executive director of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a center-right nonprofit that advocates for clean energy. “These are states that are important to the Republican demographics,” she said. “I think the members of Congress representing those states can make the case that it’s important to their districts, and those members are also likely important to the president-elect.” But others said geographic considerations only go so far, particularly when Republicans will be looking for ways to pay for a multitrillion-dollar extension of the tax cuts enacted in Trump’s first term. Lobbying from Republican lawmakers might save some projects, but “I expect the number to be few,” said Mary Anne Sullivan, senior counsel at Hogan Lovells who served as DOE general counsel during the Clinton administration. The loans office has not been particularly popular with the GOP in the past, she noted. “I expect them to be better at executing their objectives this time round,” Sullivan said of the Republicans. “If their objective is to let this program die a natural death, that would not be hard to accomplish.”

LONDON — There’s a new, green rift running through Westminster. Every major party in the British parliament is committed to ambitious climate targets in the years ahead. But that means rapidly building new solar farms, wind turbines and pylons all over the country — and MPs are getting nervous about where all this stuff is going to go. The Labour government is rushing to switch the energy system from fossil fuels to homegrown renewables by 2030. The Conservatives say they will do the same just five years later. Both have promised to steer the country to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — and some smaller parties want to hit net zero even faster than that. Voters are not all thrilled, though, about the new developments about to spring up across the country’s green and pleasant land. Alert to unrest in their own backyards, MPs from all parties are starting to make a fuss. Ministers claim that by ridding the energy system almost entirely of oil and gas by 2030, electricity will be cleaner, homes warmer and bills lower by the time the next election rolls around. “Candidly,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told the Commons in September, “unless we build the grid, solar and onshore wind, we will never get off the rollercoaster of international gas markets.” TROUBLE ON THE BACKBENCHES That means doubling the amount of energy generated by giant onshore wind turbines in the next five years and trebling it from solar farms, government advisers say. Twice as many pylons and transmission cables will have to be built in the next five years as in the last 10 to carry that new clean power. The pace of change has already spooked some of Labour’s own backbenchers, however, who worry constituents will be rattled by the prospect of new energy projects criss-crossing their part of the country. “They do not feel they are being listened to, in terms of what they want and where they need it,” Ben Goldsborough, Labour MP for South Norfolk, told MPs last month, referring to solar farms planned for his constituency.  People understand the need to “drive towards net zero,” he said — but if voters feel overwhelmed they will reject the U.K.’s “future development towards being a green superpower.” Goldsborough isn’t alone. Suffolk Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter told local media in August that planned new cables would have a “detrimental impact” on her patch. Her colleague Matt Western said the “aggregate impact” of new solar farms in his Warwickshire constituency meant they were “not appropriate.”  “Candidly,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told the Commons in September, “unless we build the grid, solar and onshore wind, we will never get off the rollercoaster of international gas markets.” | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images The issue makes Labour bosses so nervous that, according to one senior government official, ministers appointed to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero were vetted in case they faced campaigns against green developments in their own constituencies — a problem which dogged the previous Conservative government. DESNZ and the Cabinet Office declined to comment on pre-appointment discussions with new ministers. A PROBLEM STALKING ALL PARTIES Conservatives MPs, too, are worried about the country’s green plans.  Nick Timothy, a new Conservative backbencher and former adviser to Theresa May, the prime minister who signed the U.K.’s legally-binding net zero target into law, called Miliband’s decision to overrule inspectors and greenlight a giant solar farm in his constituency an “insult” to local people. Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel has also been campaigning against local pylons. “I’m against these carbuncles being plonked on our undeveloped coastlines,” said Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins of pylons proposed in her constituency. “We need to understand the concerns of communities who are seeing huge swathes of countryside now given over to massive solar development,” said former Energy Minister Andrew Bowie, who has lobbied against new pylons in his own Aberdeen constituency.  Even the Green Party — which returned four MPs in July’s general election on a promise to hit net zero as early as 2040 — gets squeamish when clean energy plans encroach on their leafy new seats. Adrian Ramsay, the Green co-leader, wants work paused on new pylons running through his Waveney Valley constituency. “There hasn’t been a proper options assessment in the way that I’m calling for. And we’ve got to get these things right, because it’s going to be infrastructure that’s there for the long term,” he told POLITICO. The Liberal Democrats — now the third largest party in the House of Commons — say the whole country should aim for net zero by 2045. They plan to send a delegation to the U.N. COP summit in Azerbaijan this month to push for global climate action But they’re not immune from the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) tendency. At the July election, the Lib Dems won a swathe of seats in leafy areas of middle England once dominated by the Conservatives, where voters are not always keen on acres of solar panels and whirling turbines. Layla Moran, an Oxfordshire Lib Dem MP, is “probably the greatest NIMBY in the House of Commons,” claim her political opponents. Moran says she shares her constituents’ “anger and frustration” at a proposed local solar farm and has been campaigning against it. Twice as many pylons and transmission cables will have to be built in the next five years as in the last 10 to carry that new clean power. | Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images The Lib Dems should be bolder about claiming a role in blocking local developments, according to one senior MP. “The danger is that we’re all so scared of the NIMBY tag that we empty-headedly agree to stuff that isn’t in the right place or isn’t the right kind of thing,” Environment spokesperson Tim Farron said.  STRIKING NIMBYISM The government is still working out where all this new green infrastructure will go. But pollsters say they are right to expect their own MPs to grow cautious. “The NIMBYism that’s present in constituencies across the country is striking. And I think the thing is, because Labour are now looking like they’re in a tough situation, individual MPs will be feeling that,” said Scarlett Maguire, director at JL Partners. Plenty of Labour MPs are “sitting on incredibly marginal victories” in July, Maguire added, so that “local issues and local campaigning — and the case your MP can make for themselves as your local representative — will only become more important over the next few years.” Those nervous MPs include nearly 90 in seats where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party came second to Labour. Reform is firmly opposed to new green infrastructure and has promised to weaponize the perceived pain from net zero on the doorstep. Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO: “We’ll fight the next election on scrapping net zero. And if I’m right that the bills don’t come down in the next couple of years, I tell you what, people are going to be very angry.” Chris Stark, the official leading the Whitehall unit tasked with hitting the 2030 goal, is alive to the challenge of getting voters onside. “I don’t think we’re going to win over everyone in the country, but I do think that there’s a sizable group of people who don’t know what we’re planning to do and are fearful of it. And that’s something I’d like to tackle,” Stark told an industry reception in September. A WAY THROUGH Some Labour MPs want their colleagues to hold their nerve on net zero and green infrastructure, however. “We need to get on with it and build lots of things. It’s far too slow at the moment, and it costs more to build in the U.K. than anywhere else,” said Josh MacAlister, a new Labour MP and a member of parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. Labour’s “growth group” of pro-building MPs has taken the message directly to Miliband and the Cabinet. In search of a trade-off for accepting something which is, to plenty of voters, currently unacceptable, ministers think there may be a way through the impasse. It comes via voters’ wallets. Labour have promised communities will benefit from hosting new infrastructure. Details on those benefits are coming “very, very soon,” according to Stark. “I’m excited about that. It’s a key part of the clean power 2030 plan.”  But MPs are still waiting. A DESNZ spokesperson said only that the department was “considering ways to ensure communities who live near clean energy infrastructure can see the benefits of this, and will provide an update in due course.” Some MPs, including Lib Dem Sarah Dyke, who represents rural Glastonbury and Somerton, wants ministers to offer bill discounts or even cash payments to farmers who host new solar farms. Pylon-hosting constituents “want to hear the word ‘compensation’,” said Labour’s Ben Goldsborough. If the government can get this right, such benefits may be a way to win the hearts and minds of voters — and their MPs, according to Maguire the pollster.  “I think [the government] is still yet to find perfect messaging and the perfect argument for this,” Maguire said. “But I would — if I was in that position — be considering more transactional offers.”

The White House is finalizing plans to spend Joe Biden’s last months in office putting the finishing touches on his legacy — even as it welcomes a successor determined to tear it all down. Senior Biden aides mapping out the remaining 65 days are prioritizing efforts to cement key pillars of the president’s agenda by accelerating manufacturing and infrastructure investments. They’re placing fresh emphasis on the major health and energy policies most at risk of repeal, while coordinating a Senate sprint to fill judicial vacancies. And in a move that could mark the last gasp of tangible American support for Ukraine, officials are rushing out $6 billion of remaining aid and preparing a final round of sanctions against Russia. New measures targeting the nation’s lucrative energy industry are among the sanctions under consideration, a White House official granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations said, now that the administration is freed from pre-election anxieties over the potential impact on domestic gas prices. The final flurry of work has provided a renewed sense of purpose within a White House unmoored by Donald Trump’s pending return to power, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen administration officials and outside advisers. Yet there’s also open acknowledgment that for all the activity, little they do in the next two months may matter after Inauguration Day. Trump is poised to take a sledgehammer to much of what the administration leaves behind — and no amount of tending to Biden’s own reputation can stop it. “The bottom line,” said Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy expert close to senior Biden officials, “is there just isn’t anything Biden can do today that isn’t reversible in 10 weeks.” The administration’s emerging lame duck strategy comes as aides simultaneously lay the groundwork for a presidential transition that Biden views as critical to reinforcing Americans’ faith in elections — and that he’s stressed must go smoothly. Biden met with Trump at the White House for two hours on Wednesday, reviving a courtesy that Trump denied him four years ago amid the then-president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Rather than resistance, White House aides granted anonymity to discuss private conversations described a sense of resignation that voters had roundly rejected the principles of Biden’s presidency in favor of a return to the freewheeling, transactional politics that Trump represents. Biden won’t shrink from the chance to make a final case for his worldview, aides said. But he’s also hardly the one Democrats are looking toward to lead the fights of the next four years. “To be frank, we’re spending a lot of time thinking about his legacy and those kinds of things,” said one of the administration officials, who was granted anonymity to describe internal discussions. In that vein, White House aides are seeking more opportunities for Biden to publicly tout his accomplishments — including sitting for more interviews or potentially delivering another major address. It remains unclear how intensive those interviews would be. Biden and his team have shied away from extended-format discussions with journalists throughout his term, preferring more tightly controlled sessions with friendly interviewers. Biden officials harbor deep worries in particular about the fate of their work abroad, where Trump is expected to abruptly shift the U.S.’ priorities. The administration is racing to ship a last batch of aid to Ukraine before Jan. 20, for fear Trump will immediately cut off support for the country’s defense against Russia. The U.S. and its G7 allies also finalized a deal struck earlier this year to loan Ukraine funds backed by profits from seized Russian assets, with the first $50 billion set to go out next month. Crucially, aides said, that arrangement is not solely subject to Trump’s whims — though he could still disrupt the plan by pulling the U.S.’ participation. The White House will also layer on new sanctions against Russia that could target its oil and gas industry, though the specifics are still under discussion, the White House official said. The move, which could garner some support from Republicans, would force Trump into a decision over whether to lift them. Biden is planning to devote a significant part of his final weeks to personally meeting with foreign leaders preparing for the repercussions of Trump’s presidency. He’s also likely to join the next virtual gathering of the 50-plus nations allied behind Ukraine, an administration official said, to encourage them to hold together even after he’s left office. Aides in the meantime are trying to clinch a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, though hopes are waning they can do much more to ease tensions in the Middle East — or improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza — before Trump takes over. “Anything farther than that on Gaza or Iran, they’ve got no shot,” said Ian Bremmer, president of risk assessment firm Eurasia Group. On Capitol Hill, the Senate’s Democratic majority is expected to spend its final weeks speeding through judicial confirmations, in a final bid to shape the courts before Republicans take full control of Congress. And after cutting back on his appearances during the closing stages of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, Biden is now likely to show up more frequently at White House events. Aides are also planning a final push to highlight the administration’s investments across the country. “He wants to just be out there getting things done and traveling,” another administration official said of Biden’s post-election focus. White House officials have focused in particular on accelerating a raft of grants to chipmakers authorized by the CHIPS and Science Act, in an effort to cement investments that Biden credits for helping revive American manufacturing on his watch. The Commerce Department has allocated more than 90 percent of the $39 billion tied to the law, but is still in negotiations with the vast majority of the companies slated to receive the awards, which need to be finalized before money can start flowing. On Friday, the administration clinched what officials hope will be the first in a series of deals before the end of the year, coming to terms on a $6.6 billion injection for an Arizona chipmaking project launched by manufacturing giant Taiwan Semiconductor. The White House is also privately recruiting allies to amplify public support for components of the chips law and Inflation Reduction Act that are at risk of repeal in a Republican-controlled Congress. Biden’s team has circulated examples of GOP support for certain elements, including Trump’s own attempt to take credit for provisions like a cap on the price of insulin. “I fully expect that a Trump administration will try to reverse a lot of the regulatory changes that Biden put in place,” said Tobin Marcus, a former Biden aide who is now head of U.S. Policy and Politics at Wolfe Research. “But that stuff doesn’t turn on a dime.” Those efforts will preserve at least some of Biden’s domestic footprint, even if it means giving Trump the opportunity to reap the rewards of programs the current White House put in place. But even as Biden swallowed his pride and devoted two hours on Wednesday to providing counsel to his nemesis about the myriad challenges to come, there was little hope that any of it would stick once Trump takes office. “Biden and Trump don’t see the world in the same way,” Daalder said. “Trump will say, thank you very much but I don’t need your advice. I’m in charge.”

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Republican lawmakers on Saturday foreshadowed America’s global climate message for the world under President-elect Donald Trump: Buy more U.S. natural gas. The assertions by five GOP Congress members at the COP29 climate talks contrasted sharply with global pledges to phase down fossil fuels, an overriding theme of the international summit. “American natural gas has helped us reduce emissions more than any other nation, and we have the capacity to continue to helping our allies reduce their emissions by exporting clean, reliable sources like LNG and nuclear,” Texas Rep. August Pfluger told reporters Saturday. The visit by Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee came as Biden administration officials and allies sought to assure other nations that U.S. climate action will continue at the state level and in corporate boardrooms. But Trump has pledged to dismember the climate law signed by President Joe Biden in 2022, roll back environmental regulations and encourage additional production of U.S. oil and gas, which is already at record-high levels. The Republicans called for a “diverse” energy portfolio that includes nuclear power, liquefied natural gas, fusion energy and carbon capture technologies. They argued that using U.S. gas results in less climate pollution than if it came from Russia or other countries, and they expressed concern that China would benefit from an expansion of clean energy such as solar because it dominates manufacturing of panels and other parts. “With technology, we can solve a lot of these problems without just banning fossil fuels,” said Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith, who represents Virginia coal country. Pfluger, who is leading the delegation, said Americans elected Trump on his pledge to lower the costs of goods like energy, and the incoming Congress would scrutinize the Inflation Reduction Act to identify provisions that go against Trump’s priorities. “If there are pieces of the IRA that help support lowering American energy costs, helping Americans, helping our partners and allies have access to affordable, reliable energy, then I bet that those will stay in place,” Pfluger said. Biden administration officials have also worked to highlight the durability of the Inflation Reduction Act and its hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and clean energy incentives. But the outgoing government has little time to lock in what funding it can. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters Friday that it would be up to the Trump administration to determine whether to restart the permitting process for new liquefied natural gas export terminals that had been halted under Biden. Trump has pressed for it to resume. “The U.S. election will have a negative climate impact. I think that’s not only easy to say, it’s obvious,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told reporters Saturday. He’s at COP29 with Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) to highlight his support for methane reductions and carbon border taxes. Negotiators at the climate conference are focused on establishing a new and much larger global goal for climate finance, finalizing guidelines for a worldwide carbon market that countries can use to meet their climate targets, and reaffirming a commitment made at last year’s summit to phase down fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency has said no new oil and gas projects are compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Trump has promised to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement when he takes office, just as he did during his first term. Ahead of their trip to Baku, several Republican lawmakers said U.S. negotiators should avoid agreeing to any outcome at COP29 that might go against Trump’s priorities. Pfluger said that would be “disrespectful” to the incoming government. “We need to do what’s best for us,” said Rep. Troy Balderson (R-Ohio).

BAKU, Azerbaijan — At the United Nations climate talks bordering the Caspian Sea, a parade of leaders came to the podium this week to urge the world to “seize the opportunities of tomorrow” — in the words of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — and to avoid disasters that would “put inflation on steroids” — U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell.   In a cavernous meeting hall nearby, U.S. President Joe Biden’s top climate diplomat (for 67 more days) announced what will almost certainly be a short-lived fee on methane pollution from the oil and gas industry.  But an ocean and a continent away, Donald Trump was making a rapid-fire series of personnel moves aimed at delivering on his promises to dismember the climate legacy of incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden and erect an alternative vision for government.  The split screen of events on opposite sides of the world is exposing the stark shift in power over global climate policy taking place in the new Trump era.  In tapping former Republican lawmaker Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, the president-elect opted for loyalty over expertise, energy industry officials said privately after being granted anonymity to express their views freely. Despite being a pro-Trump fixture on the campaign trail, Zeldin never sat on environmental committees during his four terms in the House, though he did join a voluntary bipartisan climate caucus.  The selection of Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state also signaled a shift in posture toward the United Nations, an institution that the Florida Republican has frequently criticized in unison with other conservatives. Rubio’s hawkish stance toward China also heralds clashes with a nation that many expect to fill the void that the U.S. will be leaving in global climate leadership. Trump’s pick for ambassador to the U.N., Elise Stefanik, has also been critical of the organization. Trump also announced late Tuesday that he’s tasking billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy with slashing government headcount and spending — immediately raising the prospect of the U.S. being less able to enforce laws and regulations managing the environment. Their work “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media network. The divide between the news coming out of Mar-a-Lago and from the Azerbaijani capital holds troubling implications for the roles of both domestic and international climate institutions during the second Trump presidency. That’s despite attempts at optimism during Tuesday and Wednesday’s speeches at COP29, including the assessment of Biden climate envoy John Podesta that “the global momentum … is bigger than any one country.” Biden was also readying himself to send a more concrete signal of U.S. determination to remain on the climate track: His top domestic climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast that the U.S. was preparing to announce a new national goal for cutting carbon pollution by 2035 — setting a marker for what kind of progress is possible, notwithstanding Trump’s return. Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who worked in the first Trump administration, said a “pretty wide chasm” existed between Trump’s world and the climate officials assembled in Baku, “and it’s only partially about policy.” “Part of it is about underlying thoughts about how the world should work and does work,” McKenna said. “Those of us who spent our lives in D.C., we are fundamentally conservative with a small ‘c.’ We revere institutions and credentials and process. But team Trump has figured out [that] none of that [will] help them and [that it] actually stands in their way.” That vision contrasts with three decades of painstaking international collaboration to winch down global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a realm where consensus rules and the competing aims of nations are held in check by the moral suasion of their peers. Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev bridled at the “hypocrisy” of Western countries who have lectured his oil-dependent country on climate while buying up his reserves to feed their industry. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images But this year, as war and political upheaval posed major distractions, few leaders of major economies bothered to attend COP29. (Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen were among the no-shows.) Those who did largely brought empty words. In the absence of many Western leaders, authoritarians and the heads of nations deeply reliant on the oil and gas industry for their incomes enjoyed the limelight.  Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev bridled at the “hypocrisy” of Western countries who have lectured his oil-dependent country on climate while buying up his reserves to feed their industry. On Wednesday, Azerbaijan signed gas supply deals with Slovakia and Bulgaria.  Then, on Wednesday, Aliyev threw a grenade into the talks. He used a meeting dedicated to small island nations to lecture French and other European delegates about “neocolonialism” and the destructive legacy of their former empires. That prompted France’s ecological transition minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, to boycott the talks and drew bristling responses from the Dutch and the European Union. Starmer tried to stand against the tide by announcing a goal for the U.K. to slash its emissions by 81 percent below 1990 levels by 2035. Steill, the U.N. climate chief, lauded him as a “powerful example.”  The United Arab Emirates and Brazil have also announced tough new targets as all three countries seek to zero out their climate pollution by 2050. Aliyev’s comments on colonialism were doubly charged because the real mission of the COP29 talks is to address the shortfall in the money available in developing countries to build clean energy infrastructure and to protect their communities against climate-change devastation. There, the divide among countries can be measured in the trillions of dollars. Negotiators on Wednesday night were at loggerheads over options for a new annual finance target that ranged from “a floor” of $100 billion — which rich countries prefer — to $2 trillion — a goal being pushed by countries in need. Creative solutions are being offered to get around that gap. In a strip-lighted meeting room in the temporary venue — the climate meeting is being held in the bowels of the Olympic Stadium in Azerbaijan, a petrostate that has never held an Olympic Games — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Barbadian leader Mia Mottley announced a coalition of countries backing a global “solidarity levy” on aviation, shipping, wealth and fossil fuels. Mottley insisted the levy was “not beyond us politically.”  Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine told the group that her Pacific atoll nation needed $5 billion just to protect its main two population centers from being overwhelmed by the rising ocean. Her country’s entire GDP is $280 million. But the coalition is still a germ, joined by just a handful of countries, and one of its founding members, French President Emmanuel Macron, was not present in Baku.  The prospects for any finance goal agreed at these talks will be limited if Trump decides to curtail contributions from the world’s richest country. The Biden administration provided $9.5 billion during its first three years, up from $1.5 billion when Biden took office from Trump.  In opening speeches at the U.S. pavilion on Tuesday, Podesta and Zaidi pointed to the durability of the Biden administration’s signature domestic climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump has vowed to halt the law’s billions in unspent dollars, but Zaidi said earlier in the day that it would be economically “destabilizing” to unwind it entirely — pointing to jobs and infrastructure investments the law’s tax breaks and other incentives are overwhelmingly bringing to Republican districts. They’ve also repeatedly pointed to previous bipartisan cooperation on climate, and spent time lauding the prospects for America’s nuclear industry, a Republican darling though not necessarily a favorite of Trump’s. Donald Trump has vowed to leave the Paris climate agreement for a second time, and the broader Trump orbit has largely viewed climate diplomacy as a non-factor. | Allison Robbert-Pool/Getty Images “The United States will continue, I think, to show up in one form or another to move the ball forward,” Zaidi said Tuesday. Yet the prospects for that happening in the halls of the U.N. talks appear dim. Trump has vowed to leave the Paris climate agreement for a second time, and the broader Trump orbit has largely viewed climate diplomacy as a non-factor. Some within Republican circles have pushed the incoming Trump administration to consider exiting the entire U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1992 treaty underlying the global regime of climate negotiations, according to a former Trump administration energy official. The official said the topic had sparked “healthy debate,” but was of far lower priority.   “I think there’s a common understanding and agreement that he’s going to start with Paris and then look at other ideas,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss evolving policy considerations. Mandy Gunasekara, who was chief of staff at the EPA during the last Trump administration, has advocated that Trump follow through this time on leaving the climate framework. “I think people have a clear picture of how the U.N. process is misused to tie the hands of domestic policy,” she said, inaccurately characterizing the non-binding commitments that countries make under the Paris climate agreement. “And that … creates the type of policy motivation necessary to consider withdrawing from the UNFCCC versus just a derivative issue like the Paris Agreement.” The U.S. under Trump may still find ways to participate in global climate conversations, particularly with regard to deploying new technology such as advanced nuclear power or carbon capture, said U.S. Energy Association CEO Mark Menezes, who was No. 2 in Trump’s previous Energy Department. But contributing new sums of money to developing country climate projects is likely a non-starter, he said. “If it’s about the U.S. is going to put up billions of dollars, and other countries won’t contribute to any kind of funds, I don’t think that that’s going to get very far,” Menezes said. The cognitive dissonance between the goings-on in Washington and Baku was, for at least one leader, too much to bear. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said he had discarded his “well-prepared speech” after sitting in the lounge set aside for leaders waiting for their three-minute speaking slots. What did it all mean, he asked, “if the world’s biggest polluters continue business as usual?” “I was watching the silent TV screens,” Rama said. “People there eat, drink, meet and take photos together while those images of voiceless speeches from leaders play on and on and on in the background. To me, this seems exactly like what happens in the real world every day. Life goes on with its old habits, and our speeches — full of good words about fighting climate change — change nothing.”