Climate Change
What’s the Long-Term Plan to Decarbonize Aviation?
New CLEE Report on How to Deploy More Carbon-Neutral Electrofuels or “E-Fuels”
How can we decarbonize airplane flights? It’s a “hard to abate” sector of the economy, given that the usual transportation solutions like hydrogen or batteries will likely not work for long-distance flights, given their physics. Instead, some advocates and policymakers are betting on carbon-neutral electrofuels (or “e-fuels”) as an alternative to fossil jet fuel. E-fuels …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Compelling Case for Clean Energy Subsidies
There’s a solid economic case for government support
Tax credits and direct subsidies sound like handouts. That’s not true in the case of renewable energy and electric vehicles. No should feel bashful in advocating for these subsidies. They provide very real benefits to society, not just to the shareholders in a few firms. Tax credits and subsidies. like those that were contained in the Inflation Reduction Act, will help us avoid many billions of dollars a year of harm to our environment and health. They will also make America competitive in what are clearly the industries of the future, rather than abandoning the field to China.
CONTINUE READINGHow Trump Is Boosting Clean Energy Everywhere Else
It’s partly the Iran war. But there’s also another reason.
One of the winners from Trump’s presidency has been the clean energy industry. He’s had some success in his U.S. campaign to slow clean tech, but the global picture is quite different. If anything, Trump is boosting the energy transition outside the United States. We are still the world’s largest economy, but we’re only 15% of global GDP (measured by purchasing power parity). The rest of the world no longer dances to our tune.
The Iran War has been Trump’s most notable contribution to the global energy transition. Chinese solar exports doubled in a single month, an incredible surge. The war has been a sobering lessen to many countries about the dangers of relying on fossil fuels.
Trump and Xi Meet in Beijing
As the U.S. and China meet, climate change is NOT on the agenda.
When Presidents Trump and Xi meet this week in Beijing, climate and environment will not be on the agenda. That absence is striking, because the U.S. and China are now moving in radically different directions on climate, energy, and environmental protection. The US is in an extraordinarily anti-environmental moment. It has exited both the Paris …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Other Half of Climate: Policy, Capital, and the Race to Scale Superpollutant Solutions
Learn how California is using satellite data to pull the emergency brake on global warming.
Methane and other short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) are responsible for nearly half of today’s net global warming. Because they exit the atmosphere quickly, reducing them can serve as an ‘emergency brake’ on rising temperatures. At the San Francisco Climate Week, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and the Institute for Governance …
CONTINUE READINGMethane, Exposed
Two new reports from the UCLA Emmett Institute reveal some of the largest methane sources in 2025.
One of the transformations in the climate policy world over the last few years has been the (rightful and helpful) rise in focus on methane pollution. For a long while, carbon dioxide was the attention-grabbing greenhouse gas, the one at which most policy initiatives were aimed. And CO2 remains critically important, of course. But folks …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Issue Brief: Community Engagement in Equity-Oriented EV Planning
Examining lessons from the Monterey Bay EV CAR Framework.
As federal support for the EV transition recedes, state and local planning processes are playing an increasingly central role in shaping equitable access to clean mobility infrastructure. Community engagement is a critical component of these efforts, yet relatively few case studies document how equity-oriented engagement processes work in practice. CLEE has released a new issue …
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CONTINUE READINGHow to Flip the Script for a Real Fossil Fuel Phaseout
The First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels should look to the Montreal Protocol for a model.
More than 50 governments are gathered in Colombia this week to design a roadmap to phase out oil, gas and coal. This aim, repeatedly proposed in UN climate conferences, has never seriously been pursued. Current fuel market shocks give it new urgency beyond climate change. The Santa Marta conference provides a promising platform to start …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Encouraging Signal About Federal Preemption
A new Supreme Court ruling should help states defend their climate laws.
The Trump Administration and its allies are attacking state climate laws with challenges based on preemption, arguing that federal law trumps state powers. A new Supreme Court ruling signals that the Court respects state prerogatives and isn’t willing to find preemption without a clear basis in a federal statute. Although the facts of the case are remote from environmental law, the Court’s attitude toward preemption has broader relevance.
CONTINUE READINGTrump’s Slump
The Trump regime is losing ground, creating new policy opportunities.
Trump’s term began with brutal attacks on environment and clean energy policies, but he now longer looks unstoppable. Dems are likely to make major gains in the mid-terms, consumers are deeply unhappy, and his Iran War drags on. These setbacks create openings to push back against his “energy dominance” agenda. Outside the U.S., his effort to expand fossil fuel use is failing. Domestically, there are now openings to blunt his attacks on clean tech and prepare the ground for new policies when he leaves office.
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