Climate

Here you can download the report: Building a Global Minerals Trust for a Just Green Transition [pdf]

UN scientists, experts propose "Global Minerals Trust" - a cooperative, multilateral governance mechanism to ensure sustainable, conflict-free access to critical minerals

Key points:

• Today, more than 70% of global production for key critical minerals is concentrated in just a few countries, raising serious concerns about supply security, market volatility, and geopolitical risk.
• Achieving a just and sustainable energy transition hinges on fair and reliable access to critical minerals—materials key for low-carbon technologies. However, global supply chains remain environmentally damaging and vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, creating systemic risks for both climate and economic goals.
• A Global Minerals Trust offers a new multilateral model to promote responsible stewardship, fair pricing, and secure equitable access to strategic minerals--balancing national sovereignty with planetary responsibility.
• The Trust can advance a just and circular transition by enabling pooled investment, transparent trade, mineral recycling, and benefit-sharing with resource-producing nations, particularly in the Global South.
• Global cooperation through platforms such as the G7, G20, IGF, and United Nations is essential to coordinate action and build a resilient, inclusive, and future-proof minerals governance system.
• The Trust would include independent audit mechanisms—similar to those used by the International Atomic Energy Agency—to ensure environmental and social safeguards.
• Countries would retain full sovereignty over their resources while committing to prioritize mineral flows for green technologies and avoid politicized supply disruptions.

Canada’s 2025 G7 presidency offers a strategic opportunity to facilitate early-stage consensus around the Trust, drawing on its strengths in environmental diplomacy and multilateral engagement, the report says.

Building “alternative” energy infrastructure isn’t enough. To avert climate disaster, fossil fuels need to be restricted, and energy consumption overall needs to fall.

As cities heat up, reflective roofs could lower energy bills and help the climate. But dark roofing manufacturers are waging a quiet campaign to block new rules.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36057050

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China and India have approved the construction of the largest capacity of new coal-fired power plants in a decade, as the world’s two most populous nations seek to bolster energy security, according to the International Energy Agency.

China gave the green light to almost 100 gigawatts of new coal-fired plants in 2024, and India a further 15 gigawatts, pushing global approvals to their highest level since 2015, the Paris-based agency said.

“The capacity in coal is increasing,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in an interview as the agency published its annual World Energy Investment report. “But we also see that the capacity utilization rate in China is lower than in previous years, they are mainly using this when there are major challenges to meet the electricity demand.”

AI’s Need for Power Spurs Return of Dirty Gas Turbines Senate to Reinstate US Public Lands Sale to Pay for Tax Cuts European Power Markets Brace for Extreme Heat Over the Summer Coal Power Costs Climb Just as Trump Wants to Prop Up the Fuel

Investments in coal supply continue to tick upward with another 4% increase expected in 2025, a slight slowdown compared with the 6% annual average growth seen over the last five years, the IEA said. “Nearly all the growth in coal investments in 2024 came from China and India to meet domestic demand,” according to the report.

Trends in coal and other carbon-intensive sources may not be conducive to meeting global climate targets.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35625917

While China touts climate goals and sustainability, its banks are pouring billions into commodities from the world’s rainforests, an investigation by the international NGO Global Witness has found.

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Chinese banks became the largest creditors of “forest-risk” companies globally between 2018-2024 – excluding financial institutions based in Brazil and Indonesia – according to a new analysis by Global Witness, based on data released in September 2024 by the Forests & Finance coalition.

The financial sectors of Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia provide a disproportionate amount of “forest-risk” financing to commodity producers in their own countries and are excluded from this analysis, which focuses on international financial flows. When including these countries, China ranked third globally overall in 2023, the final year for which full data is available.

The Forests & Finance database, compiled by Dutch research firm Profundo, tracks financial flows to over 300 “forest-risk” companies involved in agricultural supply chains such as beef, palm oil and soy production – industries that are major drivers of tropical deforestation.

Key findings

• Recent data shows that Chinese banks have become the largest creditors to “forest-risk”* companies, after major producing countries Brazil and Indonesia, with over $23 billion in financing provided from 2018 to 2024.
• Key Chinese banks, including CITIC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China, are among the top creditors for “forest-risk” companies such as Royal Golden Eagle Group, which has faced repeated allegations that its supply chain has driven deforestation.
• The increasing flow of finance to “forest-risk” companies undermines China’s climate and environmental goals under the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration and national Green Finance Guidelines.
• Meanwhile, Chinese banks rank poorly compared to their international counterparts in terms of deforestation-related policies, with four out of six major Chinese lenders scoring zero in the Forest 500 annual policy assessment.