Net Zero

1. Europe’s new climate plan
2. Coal’s long goodbye
3. Power Africa switched off
4. Tesla’s European headache
5. Carbon removal CBAM

The ‘endangerment finding’ is in danger.

Europe’s new climate plan

The European Union is drastically curbing its climate ambitions, with a wide-ranging policy reset that aims to halt the region’s upward spiral of energy prices without scrapping its long-term decarbonization goals entirely.

The Clean Industrial Deal announced Wednesday is a plan to channel €100 billion ($105 billion) into European clean tech manufacturing, combined with measures to underwrite demand for low-carbon industrial products like steel and cement, and provide more support for consumers to reduce their electricity bills. At the same time, officials have sharply scaled back two of Europe’s signature climate policies — on carbon tariffs and corporate carbon footprint reporting — in an effort to alleviate the regulatory burden on smaller businesses.

Europe has always been ahead of the curve on climate regulation compared to the US and other regions. But that legacy is increasingly unpopular with European business leaders and the public, who blame strict emissions controls and the rapid push into renewables for surging energy costs that have left automakers, the steel industry, and other key sectors unable to compete with China and the US. Europe’s commitment to the energy transition is made even more important by Washington’s retreat from climate action under President Donald Trump. But officials believe the only way for that commitment to survive the region’s ongoing political shift to the right — enshrined in a spate of national elections, as well as European parliamentary polls last year — is to make it less economically painful.

“There’s a new urgency to make sure that our decarbonization agenda is also unleashing industrial competitiveness,” said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. “Otherwise, politically, this will simply not work.”

Coal’s long goodbye

US electricity generators plan to remove 8.1 GW of coal-fired capacity this year, the Energy Information Administration said, roughly double the amount retired in 2024.

That’s closer to the 9.8 GW retired annually over the past decade, and represents 4.7% of the country’s total coal fleet in operation at the end of 2024. Some utilities have clung on despite talk of the fuel’s irreversible decline, citing increased demand for electricity: Nearly a third of coal-burning units with planned retirement dates have had their lives extended over the past eight years, according to recent analysis by The New York Times. But renewables look set to dominate new capacity additions in 2025, with solar and battery storage together accounting for 85% of the expected total, the EIA also found.

Cutting-edge innovations in carbon capture technology, green hydrogen production, and next-gen aircraft are revolutionizing the energy landscape. As these technologies advance, what are the biggest hurdles making them commercially viable? Hosted on the sidelines of CERAWeek in Houston, Semafor’s Climate & Energy Editor Tim McDonnell will lead news-making conversations with industry leaders including John Ketchum, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of NextEra Energy, Inc., and more, on the latest breakthroughs, challenges, and the policy shifts.

March 10, 2025 | Houston, TX | RSVP

Power Africa switched off

The Trump administration will shutter Power Africa, a flagship foreign aid program to support renewable energy projects on the continent that also led to billions of dollars in deals for US companies.

Nearly half the population of sub-Saharan Africa still lacks access to electricity, one of the region’s biggest barriers to overall economic development. Power Africa wasn’t designed to completely solve that problem, but instead to use a relatively tiny volume of US funding — just over $1 billion since the project’s inception in 2013 — to de-risk power generation and grid projects, as well as to support economic development adjacent to the Lobito Corridor rail line and other strategically important infrastructure projects. Power Africa recruited at least $29 billion in its lifetime, according to the Center for Global Development — a 24-fold leveraging ratio. Most of the program’s staff have now been fired, Bloomberg reported.

Tesla’s European headache

Tesla cars sold in Europe in January, down 45% from the same month last year. The main reason for the drop, analysts said, was fierce competition with China’s EV giant BYD. Tesla also had an inventory shortage in Europe after changing some elements of the Model Y assembly line and an ongoing scramble to push more cars out of lots. The company’s European woes aren’t helped by the grandstanding of CEO Elon Musk, whose high-profile support for right-wing politicians in Germany and elsewhere has come with a steep reputational cost. The lackluster European sales figures drove Tesla’s share price down 9%.

Push for a US CBAM

Congressional Republicans could miss a chance to support one of the few climate technologies favored by the oil and gas industry. While US President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress take aim at a wide range of climate policies, there’s still support for raising tariffs on high-carbon imports. Carbon tariff legislation may be even more likely now than in the previous Congress, because with Democrats in the minority there’s little chance they will be able to push for a national carbon price, which is widely opposed by Republicans. But the legislation that has been proposed so far is vague about how exactly foreign companies could demonstrate they are reducing their emissions in the interest of avoiding tariffs.

Instead, it should specifically incentivize those companies to invest in projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere and permanently store it, Giana Amador, executive director of the Carbon Removal Alliance, wrote in a memo first shared with Semafor. Carbon removal is a promising new revenue stream for oil companies, as well as numerous climate tech startups, that is also more broadly supported by climate advocates than conventional low-quality carbon offsets. “We see a [carbon tariff] as a way to achieve some of the president’s economic priorities in a way that supports domestic manufacturers,” Amador told Semafor. “What we want to do is clearly define the role of carbon removal.”

New Energy

• A majority of US voters in both parties support greater offshore wind development in their states, according to a new survey conducted by a Republican polling firm.

Fossil Fuels

• Shell expects global demand for liquefied natural gas to increase by around 60% by 2040, higher than last year’s forecast.
• Norway will fund Ukrainian oil and gas company Naftogaz as part of a broader aid package worth roughly €380 million ($398 million) designed to bolster the country’s energy security. Russia has fired more than 100 missiles at Naftogaz Group facilities since the start of 2024.
• Toyota is accelerating the use of hydrogen in trucks and factory equipment in Chobu, Japan, with an aim to make all its plants carbon-neutral by 2035.
• Wind and solar farms in Europe are increasingly stopping production because there isn’t enough capacity to transport or store the electricity.

Finance

• Global banking giants including HSBC, Barclays, and Wells Fargo have slashed or rejigged ESG-related roles amid backlash from Republicans in the US.

Tech

• The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts launched a new AI-driven model capable of predicting extreme weather events 12 hours further ahead. It can also forecast solar radiation and wind speeds at 100 meters, useful for renewable energy.

Politics & Policy

• India will raise concerns about the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism at a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week, which it has long argued disproportionately affects businesses in developing countries.
• The US Environmental Protection Agency is urging the White House to repeal the scientific finding that paved the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and underpins much of the federal government’s efforts to combat climate change.
• US President Trump said his administration wants to cut around 65% of the EPA’s staff.

Minerals & Mining

• Ukrainian officials said Kyiv was ready to sign an agreement with the US to jointly develop its mineral resources after Washington dropped demands for a right to $500 billion in potential revenue, though a draft text seen by the Financial Times contained no explicit security guarantees for Ukraine.

EVs

• Nigerian investors increasingly see Chinese-made EVs as a good long-term bet as gasoline prices bite, seemingly undeterred by the country’s notoriously erratic power supply.

Food & Agriculture

• Brits will need to give up two donor kebabs’ worth of meat a week to keep the UK on track to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the country’s Climate Change Committee said in advice to the government.
• Farmers and environmental groups sued the US Department of Agriculture for allegedly scrubbing references to climate change from its website, including datasets, interactive tools, and information used for planning and adaptation projects.

Personnel

• US President Donald Trump is expected to name his top former environmental attorney Jeffrey Clark as leader of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

The owners of Donald Trump’s former Washington hotel are quietly shopping the rights to the property, which has become a re-emergent watering hole for the MAGA crowd and those looking to influence it, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman reported.

“Wall Street thrives on volatility, and Trump brings plenty of it,” Hoffman wrote, noting that while the president’s self-monetization has expanded since 2021, buying a $120 (pre-inflation price) seafood platter called the “Trump Tower” is a cumbersome way to curry favor.