Net Zero

1. Oil price tanks
2. Trump’s chemical rollback
3. Oil majors off course
4. Breeding less gassy cows
5. LNG overshoot

Congress confronts tariffs, and African countries confront ‘carbon grabs.’

Are there any winners in the energy transition during a rapidly escalating global trade war? For the most part, tariffs clearly work against decarbonization: Renewable energy and utility-scale energy storage projects in the US are highly dependent on imported parts from Vietnam and other countries that now face steep tariffs, which will raise construction costs at a time when these projects’ upfront spending requirements were already one of their main bottlenecks. Electric-vehicle prices will also go up. Meanwhile, prices for oil and gas, which were exempted from tariffs, have fallen steeply in the past week, making them more competitive with alternative energy sources. Coal traders in Asia will likely benefit from a push to reduce manufacturing costs there.

Yet there could be a few silver linings in the storm. A tanking stock market means lower borrowing costs, while central banks elsewhere like the Bank of England and the European Central Bank are projected to cut rates more than previously expected, which could benefit renewable project developers.

And what will happen with all the solar panels and EV batteries that China is churning out which were once bound for the West? Pre-existing trade barriers with the US and EU were already driving more of those to emerging markets, said Antoine Vagneur-Jones, head of trade and supply chains at BloombergNEF. That trend will accelerate, which could either improve those countries’ access to low-cost clean tech or give them leverage to negotiate deals with Chinese manufacturers to invest in new local factories, something that Turkey, for one, is already doing.

And there’s one other way a global trade war could help the climate crisis, although with plenty of unpleasant side effects: Lower economic activity overall means lower emissions.

Oil price tanks

Oil prices plunged to their lowest level since the pandemic, and in the US crossed below a critical threshold that could lead many small producers to shut down wells.

The US benchmark fell below $60 per barrel on Monday, as traders fear an impending global recession will sap oil demand and the OPEC+ producers group ramped up its output.

According to research firm Rystad Energy, the average “breakeven” price for most US drillers is above $62. The current price is especially a problem for fracking companies in the Permian basin, Rystad’s VP for North American oil and gas Matthew Bernstein said in a note — and that, in turn, is a major problem for US President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, since “nearly all” of the production growth forecast for the US this year was due to come from the Permian.

Low prices are relatively less painful for OPEC, the biggest rival to US producers: The group, along with its partner Russia, is forging ahead with production increases despite the low price as a way to maintain its internal political cohesion in the face of a newly volatile market, analyst Amena Bakr wrote for Semafor Gulf.

Neil Chatterjee, chief government affairs officer at energy software provider Palmetto and former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

How Trump slowed the fight against ‘forever chemicals’

The first Trump administration took steps to slow down regulations or alter the Environmental Protection Agency’s research on chemicals that pose a pressing public health threat, former officials say. In an excerpt shared exclusively with Semafor from their new book about the ubiquitous but dangerous class of chemicals called PFAS, Rachel Frazin and Sharon Udasin, environmental reporters at The Hill, detail how political appointees in Trump’s first EPA held back career scientists’ work to designate more PFAS chemicals as hazardous. Ultimately the administration green-lit more than two dozen PFAS chemicals to hit the market in spite of mounting evidence of their harm. Now, in Trump’s second term, the EPA is again chasing a plan to roll back PFAS restrictions, and to fire scientists. Frazin and Udasin’s book, Poisoning the Well, makes clear just how dangerous those plans could be.

Oil majors off course

The world’s biggest oil companies are drifting even further out of alignment with the Paris Agreement climate targets. New analysis from the research group Carbon Tracker found that most oil majors are backtracking on their energy transition plans, amid the US abandonment of its climate goals under Trump, pressure in Europe to ease energy cost increases caused by the war in Ukraine, and shareholder demands to stick to traditional core profit centers.

Carbon Tracker’s analysis — which includes upstream production plans, greenhouse gas reduction targets, efforts to curb methane, and other factors — ranks Mexico’s state-owned Pemex as the world’s least climate-friendly oil company; US giants ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil also rate poorly. Although some European majors have slipped in the ranking compared to last year, they still sit near the top. Spain’s Repsol, which still has a plan to cut its fossil fuel production, comes out with the most climate-friendly score.

Breeding less gassy cows

Amount of grant funding the Bezos Earth Fund will provide to help researchers find and breed low-methane cattle. The new program will screen 100,000 cows across the globe for the methane intensity of their farts and burps — within a single herd, some cows can be up to 30% less gassy than others — and set up breeding programs to expand the population of “cleaner” cows. Reducing methane emissions from livestock is one of the fastest ways to curb near-term global warming, and although numerous researchers and companies are developing specialized foods and other tech-forward approaches, the new Bezos program aims to get more mileage out of old-fashioned selective breeding: Similar attempts have gained traction in the UK and New Zealand.

Jörg Kukies, Federal Minister of Finance, Germany, will join top global leaders at Semafor’s 2025 World Economy Summit, taking place April 23-25, 2025, in Washington, DC. As the first major gathering since the new US administration took office, the summit will feature on-the-record discussions with 100+ CEOs.

Bringing together leaders from both the public and private sectors — including congressional leaders and global finance ministers — the three-day summit will explore the forces shaping the global economy and geopolitics. Across 12 sessions, it will foster transformative, news-making conversations on how the world’s decision-makers are tackling economic growth in increasingly uncertain times.

April 23-25 | Washington, DC | Learn More

LNG overshoot

The world could be cruising toward a major oversupply of liquefied natural gas. A new report from the nonprofit research group Resources for the Future provides a helpful comparison of energy market outlooks from a wide range of prognosticators, including BloombergNEF, the International Energy Agency, and oil majors like Exxon and BP. Taken together, one thing they suggest is that the shift away from fossil fuels is moving more slowly than expected as global energy demand increases. But they also indicate that the current rapid buildout of LNG export and import terminals could be outpacing future LNG demand, especially if key import markets like Europe and China continue to make progress on low-carbon alternatives. The implication, the report concludes, is that LNG terminals will either become an entrenched obstacle to meeting global climate goals, as investors push for their continued use — or that investors could be left stuck with a “stranded asset.”

New Energy

• One thing that will help US solar installers weather the tariff storm: Their habit of hoarding solar panels.
• The US Department of Energy is considering closing its Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and ending billions of dollars in grants for carbon capture and other advanced tech. Hydrogen might get spared the axe.
• BP is shutting its low-carbon mobility division because it is no longer “commercially viable” to devote resources to developing tech for hydrogen-fueled trucks, execs said.

Fossil Fuels

• Mexico is looking at ways to expand its shale gas production to distance itself from US suppliers.
• A controversial plan in Texas to use public funding to back new gas-fired power plants is stumbling as projects face rising construction costs and timelines.
• Shell reduced its forecast for gas production this year, due to unplanned maintenance issues.

Finance

• Apocalyptic fires in California are creating a juicy profit opportunity for a niche group of hedge funds.

• Foreign companies investing in carbon offset projects in Africa are systematically underpaying, Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank, complained, saying that “carbon grabs” have replaced land grabs as a commonplace form of exploitation on the continent.

Tech

• Domestic battery manufacturers in the US should be thankful for trade barriers. They’re not.

Politics & Policy

• US intelligence officials ignore climate change at their peril, the former top commander of NATO writes.
• Trump has suggested that the US could take over management of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. Nearby residents are skeptical.

Minerals & Mining

• Ukraine will send another delegation to Washington this week in hopes of hammering down a final version of a deal on critical minerals.

President Donald Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director is jettisoning executives and policies at breakneck speed, sparking chaos at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as his ultimate goal remains elusive even to Republicans, Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller reported.

FHFA chief Bill Pulte’s shake-up of the firms risks elevating housing costs at an already precarious economic moment — while privatizing the firms, as some Republicans desire, carries its own risks.

“This is the beginning of the road for Fannie and Freddie,” Mueller wrote. “Where the road leads is less certain.”